[Firefoot]

At the captain’s order to halt, Grimkul threw down his pack right where he stood. He was tired of forced marching, tired of being forced to do anything. More than once in the past several days he’d had half a mind to simply desert and set off on his own, though Ulwakh’s good advice had prevented him from doing so, saying he would not get far in this barren terrain before being spotted. Grimkul didn’t particularly care; he figured he could fight any that came after him. Ulwakh knew better than this, too: large as Grimkul might be for their small breed of Orcs, he wasn’t a match in size or strength to most of the Orcs in the camp, the Captain included.

And he had more than half a mind to slip away now. They were close, oh so close, to the Mountains now, the same mountains where the pair had once lived. “What say we slip away, now, Ulwakh? They won’t see us now, eh, in the setting up camp? We can hide up in the mountains, be done with this filth. Be just like the old days.”

But Ulwakh was shaking his head. “We’s too far south – this ‘ere mountains are Dwarvish holds. We’d ’ave to go north first, ’fore heading into the mountains… and we’d not get far. See how far you can see? There’s not any cover for us. We’d be brought back and punished for sure… and that captain ain’t exactly a nice one.”

“So let’s be done with the captain,” said Grimkul, looking on his companion with irritation. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t want to go back to the mountain tunnels.”

“I do, I do!” Ulwakh rushed to assure him. He had seen that light in Grimkul’s eyes before – the one he got when he was getting ready to knock off a head or two. Ulwakh preferred to keep his head. “It’s just, we’ve got to be smart about it.” That was a bad thing to say; Grimkul didn’t like it when he mentioned smarts. And while Ulwakh would never say it out loud, Grimkul didn’t have a whole lot of smarts, but he still got angry if he thought anyone was offending his intelligence. Ulwakh hastily covered up, “We’ll get our chance, you’ll see.”

Grimkul chose not to respond. Instead, he took out his scimitar and began searching around for some small animal. He felt like fresh meat tonight. Ulwakh still didn’t know why Grimkul preferred the scimitar for hunting and such; weapons like his own knives were much more efficient. Once again, though, he would never say this out loud.

Grimkul’s blade was poised over a rodent hole, ready to kill the unsuspecting creature that showed its face. Too bad they didn’t have any bats around here – bats were tastier than rodents. In fact, Grimkul liked bats so much that he had made his jerkin out of batwings. He was distracted from his thoughts of bats as a nose and whiskers appeared at the bottom of the hole. Just a little bit farther…

“Get this camp in order; it’s in shambles!” called out their company leader as he walked by. “Captain’s orders!” Grimkul’s rodent disappeared back into its hole. He scowled at the leader – Lushurd, his name was.

“I’ll give you orders,” Grimkul muttered, but he was mindful of Ulwakh’s restraining hand on his arm and did nothing for the time being. Ulwakh feared for the day he did decide to “give the captains orders.”