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.

Grognak Skullsplitter marched his warband north out of the southern forest at dawn, as promised. He did not march to Ashrock. He turned east, into the scrub country where the black tigerbears denned, because a chief with no wolves needed teeth of his own. The tigerbears fought him for six days. He lost four warriors to claws and one to a broken neck. On the seventh day he wrestled a bull down in a dry creek bed and did not kill it. He tied its jaws with rope soaked in blood and fed it from his own hand. By the second moon, twenty of the beasts wore harness. His warriors rode them low and heavy, axes strapped to the saddle. While the men learned to ride, the women built. Grutha Ironheart set the mud huts in a ring around a fire pit and called it a camp, then a village. Orc children were born there. Grognak counted three the first month, seven the next. Future warriors. He had a clan again, growing under him, and mounted teeth to guard it. He did not go after the wolf pups. He had gambled that promise to Grakthar the White to buy time, and time was what he had spent. The moon Grakthar had given him was almost gone. His white orc scouts came back on tigerbear at dusk. There were three of them, ash-painted, ribs showing under their harness. The lead scout slid down before the mount stopped. "Chief. East. A day's ride." "White orc?" "No. Elves. Dark ones. Building a town of stone." Grognak set down the strap he was oiling. "Say it clean." "Towers already up. Spires the color of a bruise. They have cages. Fire wolf pups inside, six or seven. Orcs tied to posts. White and black both. Ironjaw paint on two of them." Grutha stepped closer. Grognak did not look at her. "How many elves?" "Hundreds. A king walks the wall. White hair. Small. Wears black." Grognak knew the name from trader talk. King Lucian. The dark elf who counted orc raids the way a miser counted coin. A second rider came in behind the scouts. Not his. She rode no mount. She walked out of the brush with her hands open and her sword sheathed, purple eyes catching the firelight. Armor black, cloak black. Dark elf. "Velrith Shadowbane," she said. "I speak for no one here. My king takes your captives at first light. He will burn the paint off them and start with the black." "Why tell me?" "Because he means to kill every clan. Yours first. He has the wrong chief in mind, but he will settle for you." Grognak looked at the tigerbears in their pen, at the huts, at the small orcs sleeping between them. He had built something worth losing. Now something