Inheritance

Month 2- Week 1

Kron – Horde Territory – The Magic Forest

What did her little note say? He stared down at the paper cradled in his hands. It was like magic that she could read and write. Kron couldn’t read or write very well, and he carefully traced the symbols with a talon. He’d never had the patience to learn and no elder had been willing to work with one like him who could not sit still for long.

With his heart soaring in the clouds Kron bade farewell to the spirit of the magic forest. It acknowledged his respectful departure and the pathway home materialized out of the dense growth around the spring. Today had been a good day.

The young orc fairly skipped back to the hive. There was a library there full of books, books that could teach him how to read human. And if he could read human, then he could write human.

Suddenly there were so many things Kron wanted to say. Things that didn’t want to be screamed and bellowed but whispered secretly and tenderly in the margins of letters. Breathy, soft, almost afraid to be named things. Words confessed with foreheads pressed together as the world recedes from one’s awareness and all that exists is just two beings.

He was preoccupied as he passed through the familiar landscape leading to the Walls of the hive. Those massive stone structures, which surrounded the opening to the cave system and left no invader avenue to sneak up on or infiltrate the hive were probably the only thing that ever brought him home. The only time Kron slept within the confines of his home was when he was up for rotation for watch duty on the walls.

Trudging past pens with stone fencing where the huge sows and boars of the Horde were bred and kept, Kron was unable to hear anything over the snuffling and squealing within. Splashing muck and snorting hogs isolated him from those few Orcs he passed on his purposeful journey. The stench of manure causing him to sniff in annoyance.

“Kron.” Whirling on the male that had grabbed onto him, Kron pressed his blade against the neck of the young orc warrior. Kron fought the blood rage that tried to force his hand as recognition dawned. Calmly the orc held his hands up for peace. “It’s just me Kron. It’s Carrith. I’m in your patrol.”

Shaking his head, the berserker struggled against the throbbing rush of blood through his head. Where mere seconds ago he had been obsessing over peace and gentility, the rage of the berserker now nearly overwhelmed him calling on him to surrender to oblivion and succumb to the pure unadulterated joy of blood and death.

After agonizing long moments, reason won. And inch by painful inch Kron succeeded in pulling the blade back from Carrith’s vulnerable pulsating, throat. The young orc swallowed nervously and Kron almost lost his battle of will as he watched the muscles sliding beneath Carrith’s leathery skin. Putting away the blade, Kron apologized to Carrith.

“I’m sorry.” He should have been paying better attention to what he was doing, and to his surroundings. He could have killed one of his patrol mates and then where would Dara be? “I guess I’m a little on edge.”

“I bet!” Carrith laughed taking a deep appreciative breath. “I’d be on edge too if I spent as much time out there as you did.” He reached a hand up and ran it through his hair. “But I had a reason for talking to you and it wasn’t to lecture you on your choice of sleeping arrangements.” With a sigh of frustration that this was taking too long, Kron tried to be patient. His patrol mate seemed to be talking nonsense.

“What do you need?” Managing not to scream it, Kron was quite pleased with himself at that small accomplishment.

“It’s just that it is very warm inside the hive…” Carrith said oddly, letting the sentence trail off and giving a slight tug on Kron’s cloak.

“And…?” Kron asked impatiently unsure what the boy wanted and annoyed that the younger orc was getting his scent all over the cloak. His eyes narrowed angrily.

“And you might not want to take your cloak inside the hive.” Carrith pointed at the cloak as he said the word then in the general direction of the Hive as he spoke. The emphasis his patrol mate placed on his words finally started getting through to Kron…as did Carrith’s comment about sleeping arrangements. OH. “You patrol near human settlements, and you ‘smell’ like it.”

Any sense of subtlety that Carrith had been going for was ruined by the air quotes he used when he said the word ‘smell’. Shit, you could hear the euphemism in his voice. As for Kron, he was somewhere between choking on his amusement and being horrified that he had almost endangered Dara the way that he had been about to. He hadn’t even thought to hide the scent on his cloak from anyone. And any orc who got within twenty feet of him was going to think he’d been having close physical contact with naked human females.

He knows! A little voice whispered in Kron’s head. He knows about Dara.