Grognak Skullsplitter's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Grognak Skullsplitter counted his dead before he counted the living. Two hundred black orcs lay in the shallow valley, arrows in their backs, throats opened by white teeth that were not orc teeth at all. His warband had come south to claim this forest as new ground for the Ironjaw clan, a foothold before the march on Ashrock Fortress in the north. The white orcs had claimed it first. Their wolves had done the rest. He walked the field with white paint drying on his dark face. A black tigerbear could kill a wolf. He had none. He had axes and shields and men who had never fought a mounted enemy. Uniting the scattered clans of Aquanto under one banner meant nothing if his own warband bled out in a valley no one had named. Grutha Ironheart came up beside him, small and armored, her crown dulled with mud. She had pulled him off the line herself when a wolf took his horse. She spoke without looking at him. "We lost half." "I know." "March north now and we lose the rest." He did not answer. She was his queen and she stood at his shoulder because no one else would tell him the truth this fast. A horn sounded from the tree line. A single rider came down the slope with a white banner tied to his spear. Behind him, at a distance, a broad white orc with a yellow topknot waited on foot. Grakthar the White. Grognak had seen him once across a river three winters ago. The rider stopped ten paces out. He was smaller than Grognak expected, black-bearded, white-skinned, and he sat a grey direwolf that watched the black orcs the way a butcher watches meat. Grokkar Frostfang. The wolf under him was thin at the flanks. Recent birth, Grognak noted. Recent loss. "Chief," Grokkar said. "Grakthar offers terms." "Speak them." "Leave the forest by dawn. Keep your wounded. Keep your dead." Grutha's hand moved to her axe. Grognak lifted two fingers and she stopped. "Your wolf," Grognak said. "She whelped." Grokkar's jaw tightened. "That is not your business." "Pups taken?" The white orc said nothing, which was answer enough. "I have trackers," Grognak said. "Twenty of them, alive still. Tell Grakthar I leave the forest at dawn. Tell him my trackers find your pups before the next moon, or he keeps this valley and every wolf-bitten stone in it." Grokkar stared at him a long moment. Then he wheeled the direwolf and rode back up the slope. Grutha waited until the rider was gone. "You cannot find those pups." "I can try." "And if you fail?" "Then I march on Ashrock with half a warband and no wolves, and the other clans watch me die." He turned north. The season was already turning against him.