Heirs of Hatred

Chapter 6: The Prey

The nights were dark in the bristle pine forest, as only those who knew the paths knew where moonlight would touch the campfire. For only there, guided by moon and stars one would truly find rest. So the old stories told. It did not mean that every night was one where the moon, the lost egg, could bless its children but whenever orcs of the south made camp they hoped that it would be a night where their fire would warm the egg in the sky.

Three of those who knew the paths through the thickets sat around a fire that was blessed by the egg that very night. They had made camp in a clearing not far from the coast for their prey always lurked near the mists of the eastern shores. They did not plan to take their prey that night, but neither of them knew that another was soon to arrive.

"And then I punched him ahahaha!!" one of the three said with a bellowing voice. In his hand he held a horn full of liquor made from berries, harsh herbs and honey. His skin was green and full of scars and red paint, while his face carried bigger tusks than most other orcs as they almost reached the place where his nose once had been. No trace of a scar was around those holes that must have been his nose at one point but it was clear it had been cut off a long long time ago. He wore nothing but a long grey pelt that hung above half his legs like a robe while on his head wide and proud black dreadlocks bellowed with him in the warm night breeze. Making the bones that were adorning them pinch and click together in applause to his story.

It took a good while of him laughing at his own words and holding his rather thick green belly before another at the campfire spoke.

"Of course you did" said a smiling light green orc woman who sat opposite of the fire. "As much as I respected him..his face was always pretty punchable! Hehehe!"

She was clad in straps of leather and adorned with pieces of a grey wolf. Its paws were strapped around her hands, its head and pelt rested on her head and back.

Next to her rested the third hunter, a giant brown wolf, big enough that she could ride on it and that shared her eyes. It was laying down and gnawing on the remains of a big bone while she held a drinking horn in one hand and rested her other on her big bone and stone made sword next to her. "He tried to start a fight with me when I was still a pup." She said and drank from her horn before an answer bellowed back across the flames. "Ha! Train them early is what we say in the Rots!" His eyes were orange and yet still far closer to what Humans would see similar to their own.

"Never let a Stag try to train a wolf is what I say! Ha!" she yelled back across the bristling campfire and drank from her horn. A wide grin was born on the noseless face across the fire before he spoke "He did quite a good job I say..". His eyes grinned with him as they pierced above the fire to her. She laughed all so slightly and turned to pet her wolf before he continued "I mean him of course!" he pointed at the wolf next to her and laughed again now together with her. Their laughter was an echo through the forest's choir of the night.

"You should have seen him when his daughter suddenly punched back!" she said with a wide toothy grin. He suddenly stopped drinking and spilled some of it before he answered "What do you mean?! I was there!".

Her drunk head tried to remember for but a moment, only for her to shake her head "I thought you came to us later..." She shrugged her shoulders and drank again. "By the oak, ...your tongue cuts deeper than your sword sometimes.." he said with an overplayed face of melancholy. She smiled at him again "I only remember you when you had already grown to be fat and ugly" "Now that's more what I like to hear hahaha!!" They both laughed again for quite some time.

As the laughter faded she stared into the flame for a moment longer before her eyes moved back to him "Do you regret it sometimes?"

As her question reached his mind he slowly lost his smile and got another big gulp from his horn "Ahhh...sometimes.." he said as he looked up at the moon "Life was easier when he showed me how.." The wolf woman nodded and looked up herself. "He was strong." The noseless man said and looked back over the flames to her. As she looked back down and their eyes met, she answered "I know his heir is too." A proud deep giggle escaped him before he gulped down the last bit of his horn. They drank quite a lot that night and he knew that the last horn would be the one too much. Still it could never be wrong to drink under the moon. To warm the egg with fire and tales. Their day had been long but their night would be longer for not only the stars were watching them.