I did train of course, both Thaumaturgy and combat, and within a few more days Gruin was well enough to join me. I noticed Vara had warmed up to him somewhat, perhaps thanks to his almost dying to save her, and any time I wasn’t practicing my bladework with him I’d be honing my Thaumaturgy with her.

  “You don’t fight like a lank anymore,” Gruin grunted as we exchanged blows one morning.

  “What does that mean?” I gasped. It’d already been a few minutes since our latest bout began, and I was starting to slow down while Gruin kept all of his usual strength. It’d be an hour, at this pace, before he started to exhaust himself. I wouldn’t be able to sustain it for even half that long.

  “You’re lasting longer,” he grunted, “and you’re…not weak.”

  ‘Not weak’ was Gruin’s way of describing a person who could lift three hundred pounds overhead, which, at that point, I’d recently discovered I could actually do myself. That had shocked me, even with the stone or so of extra muscle I’d piled on lately.

  Hadn’t shocked Gruin, but I suspected that was because he had a skewed impression of what humans were actually capable of. He took an entire day of convincing to finally believe that Vara wasn’t able to do a single push-up, and responded to that by laughing at her for about twenty minutes.

  The levity I got from that didn’t last long though, because days slipped by and the date of my attack on the orcs drew closer. I learned more about them as I prepared myself, and each new factoid left me less confident than the one that had come before it.

  Gruin and I set out a few days later, albeit better equipped than before. I’d had my equipment repaired while I waited, and Gruin was now weighed down by his own helmet and chainmail. Morlo had promised the both of us a more extensive suit of plate armour, but apparently such things took time to make.

  Personally, I would have waited for that time to expire before going out to fight fucking orcs.

  As I expected, Gruin wasn’t slowed one iota by a mere stone or so of metal, and if anything I found the long walk refreshing as we made our way out of the city and headed in the vague direction we’d been told there were barbaric monsters eating people. As far as plans went, I’d heard better.

  “What do you know of fighting orcs?” I asked him, probably for the tenth time so far. Gruin just growled, again. Despite the repetition, he never seemed to lose enthusiasm for talks about killing that particular kind of creature. At the time I thought it was innate to his blood, now I just think he was a dick.

  But that didn’t mean I’d have wanted anyone else fighting alongside me, of course. I knew Gruin well enough to be certain my odds were far better alongside him than if he’d been replaced by two competent men-at-arms, maybe three or more now he was in chainmail. That hammer was looking dented, now, but all that reminded me of was how many skulls I’d seen explode beneath it.

  After a day of travel we came to roughly where the orcish raids had been reported as happening. I’d half-expected to see the land scoured of life, covered in fire and brimstone, decorated by heads on spikes and other monstrous effigies. This was because everything I knew about orcs came from books written by humans.

  “Hm, they’ve been here,” Gruin scowled, “I can tell.”

  I didn’t bother asking how, just sort of used to Grynkori doing things we couldn’t by then.

  “Which direction?” I inquired instead, considering it the far more immediately useful question. Gruin gestured us one way with his hammer, and I hurried in the direction indicated. My sword seemed to have drawn itself.

  Now, if you are at all familiar with orcs and how they tend to operate, you’ll know that I was woefully under-prepared for this fight. Gruin was a little bit better, but still far from ideal. I learned as much when the orcs announced their presence with a volley of arrows, all of which missed us, none of which did so by more than a yard.

  Instantly, I was frozen in place and doing my best not to make any sort of movements that might inspire a more accurate volley. Gruin was as terrified as I’d ever seen him—which is to say, not scared in the slightest—and started waving his hammer around roaring.

  “Come on you pack of bastards, you can shoot better than that!”

  “NO!” I roared, “there’s no need for that, we can…talk about this.”

  No sooner had I said it than a man popped his face out from behind a nearby tree, although, looking at it, I didn’t consider it to be much of a man, nor much of a face. The orc stood just a few inches shorter than me, which I was later to learn actually made him small for their people, and had literal tusks protruding from his jaw.

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  “You say you want to talk, but your face promises violence.”

  What? Oh, I was grinning again. That stupid lie my body did without even asking me first, I’d gotten a lot of mileage out of it before now but it seemed the time had finally come to be hurt rather than helped by my automatic bluff.

  “It’s not my face talking to you know, it’s my voice,” I replied. The voice in question was a good deal shakier, which didn’t exactly project strength, but I hoped that it would at least convince the orc I wasn’t salivating at the thought of slaughtering him.

  “Then speak, manthing.”

  It was, I realised, what the orcs referred to humans as. Well fine.

  “We’ve been hired to kill you,” I blurted out like an idiot. Some people—lots of people—would’ve had me shot the moment I uttered that phrase, but this one just studied me curiously.

  “We know,” he grunted, saying no more. Beside me Gruin was starting to get twitchy. That immediately gave me a deadline for this negotiation, because if the Grynkori lost his patience I was entirely sure he would start swinging at random. Probably, the first to die would be this orc talking to me now. After that all his archer friends would fire and, tough as Gruin was, I doubted he’d survive that chainmail or no.

  “Well we’re not going to,” I added. Gruin yelled at that, glaring at me.

  “They’re fucking orcs!” he spat.

  “I should have your head, Grynkori,” the orc growled. In an instant they were both stalking towards each other with narrow eyes and faces twisted in hatred. I knew I had seconds, maybe, before blood started sloshing out and limbs came off. I had to think fast, and speak faster.

  “Surely the two of you have work to do that isn’t worth giving up just to kill the other!” I actually didn’t know that at all, but it was the only hope I had of dissuading the two murderous lunatics from…well, murdering each other.

  Luck must’ve been on my side, because it actually gave them both pause. Even Gruin.

  “How would you know that?” the orc growled.

  Obviously, I hadn’t. Not in specific. People in general just tend to have better things to do than getting killed for no reason. Still, I saw no reason to contradict his assumption since it appeared to be doing so well in prolonging my life.

  “I’m here to talk,” I pressed, “and as far as I can tell you’re an intelligent person who I can have a conversation with. Who I can reason with, why not give that a go?”

  As far as I could tell, he was a giant, hairless monkey. His skin was a green-ish grey and seemed tight around unnatural muscle, his nails and teeth jagged, yellowed with hard use. The weapon he wielded was all of that and more, a big, heavy iron thing that I reckoned I would have struggled with hauling around. He held it easily enough and waved it in Gruin’s face just as the Grynkori’s own, similarly ridiculous hammer was swung around in his.

  Incentive not to fuck up my negotiations, then.

  “If you kill us, more people will come afterwards,” I said at once, “you know this, right?”

  Of course I had no idea at all whether he did know this, again as far as I was concerned I was talking to a giant monkey. Fortunately my idiotic notion about what orcs were capable of proved mistaken, and this one picked up the logic of what I was saying all on his own without a moment’s pause.

  “I do,” the orc spat. Clearly he wasn’t happy with the idea—which I had to admit even at the time was fair enough—and that bitterness glowing in the backs of his eyes gave me a bit of inspiration as to how I might turn this whole affair to my advantage. Or try to, at least. I had better odds than if I fucking fought them that was for sure.

  “So, what if we tell everyone you’re dead, and you can move on without being pursued? If nothing else you’ll get a few days’ head-start, but if you kill us now that’ll be pretty good evidence that we didn’t do anything to drive you away. People will come looking, again, and they’ll know where you last were.”

  The orc had a thoughtful look on his face, but not the kind people get when their mind is made up. He shook his head, slowly.

  “We need to raid here.”

  Irritation stabbed at me, and maybe I was getting too confident I wouldn’t be killed, but I snapped out in that irritation.

  “Why!?” I growled, then regretted it instantly. The orc bristled, looked to be on the brink of attacking me. Gruin grinned, and looked to be on the brink of meeting that attack. All of us just stared at one another and adjusted our footing to a killing stance for several seconds before the moment of danger passed. Then the orc spoke.

  “We need food to make our way north, before the invasion comes.”

  Invasion? As young and ignorant as I was, that certainly didn’t sound good.

  “What invasion?” I hurriedly probed, “this is news to me.”

  The orc seemed reluctant to share more, the bastard, but did so after a hesitant few moments.

  “There is a big force coming to that city you call Arvhest,” he butchered the pronunciation as I might that of his own settlements, “and it is run by others of my kind who…do not like me.”

  That surprised me a great deal, in my stupidity I’d always assumed all orcs got along. Thinking about it for a second or more would have killed that notion quickly of course, but then thinking had never been something I made time for.

  “Do you know how many?” Gruin asked, “and with what sort of equipment?”

  He was asking the practical questions of course, and that he did so with such a lack of delay was my first hint about the Grynkori’s true nature. I wouldn’t finish piecing that together for a good long while still, though.

  “No. Many, though,” the orc replied, “and their weapons are the same as ours. Bows and blades.”

  I took one look at the bow strewn across his back. Archers were a dwindling force upon the modern battlefield, it had to be said. Even the famous Anglysh longbow was becoming increasingly rare as armour increased in abundance and formations grew tighter.

  But I found it hard to draw any relief from that thought as I saw Gruin’s expression.

  “Many,” he echoed, smiling grimly. “I’ve never known an orc to consider any less than tens of thousands to be many.”

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