[Regin Hardhammer]

The three female orcs had not moved from their hiding place in the slagheap. Zagra still held Mazhg in her arms and was trying to comfort her. Both sisters looked upset. Ungolt scrambled up and announced, "I have no more heart to raid. That cat made me afriad. The lights burned my eyes. I am going back to camp." With that she began tramping across the dark plain.

When Ungholt reached camp, she grabbed a handful of turnips to eat and sat down beside the pile of reeds she had gathered earlier that evening. She began to work on weaving a new basket. But all her hard work could not chase Mazhg's words from her head or erase the cat's wild face. Mazhg had seen the cat fade into the shadows and a moment later a man stood in nearly the same place. He had looked at Mazhg strangely. Then the skies had broken open so that all three women plugged their ears and covered their eyes.

Ungolt trembled when she remembered the words that Mazhg used to describe what had happened: it was as if the Dark Lord's wizards had taken control of the night. Ungolt was afraid of meeting a wizard who was master of wild cats and fire and thunder. Could he master her too? She wanted to be free to have a small place of her own but maybe she had made a mistake coming here.

Ungolt began thinking very carefully about what Mazhg had said. The breeding farm owners had said that the Dark Lord had been killed at the end of the last great war. That was why the Orcs no longer had a leader and why the women on the breeding farms had been allowed to go away. If the Dark Lord was dead, Ungolt reasoned, then his wizards must be dead too. But soemone had made the fire.

When Ungolt was young, the others had told her about terrible creatures who hated and killed Orcs, especially young Orcs and women. Ungolt was afraid of regular men, but these monstors were worse. They were orc slayers and powerful wizards who were usually called "Elves". Elves had ugly pointed ears, ate food that tasted like wood, and made sappy music no orc could bear to listen to. By the time Ungolt finished weaving her basket, she had decided the monstor who commanded the cat and the sky fire must be an Elf.

She walked over to the edge of camp to do some personal business and happened to notice that Makdush had thrown out his rusted back-up sword into the bushes. Since makdush had a gleeming new blade, he no longer needed this one. She stared at it and stooped down. Glancing around to make sure that no one was looking, she scooped it into her heavy leather bag. She would need something to defend herself and her friends against the powerful Elf wizards.