Jean spotted the orc just before sunset, and they stared at each other for several minutes. The orcs were never subtle about their business, but this one seemed particularly unconcerned about being seen. Jean's flock of sheep browsed lazily between them as they considered each other. The orc looked female, clad in the skirted cuirass of the orcish infantry. Her armor was covered in scales of a variety of colors. Jean had heard that orcs were only allowed to reinforce their armor with scales from dragons they'd killed themselves. He wondered how many she'd have had to kill to get a suit like that.

After several minutes of staring at him, the orc turned her attention to his flock. He'd been herding the sheep back towards their pen at the family farm when he'd spotted her. She was close enough that he could see her face, but he could not decipher her expression in the deepening twilight. Orcs were supposed to be bloodthirsty and fearful, but her features were foreign to him; her dull green skin was completely devoid of fur other than a tight black bun on the back of her head, she had neither whiskers nor tail, her ears were flat against her head and immobile, and her muzzle was short and flat. She frowned at his sheep, her brow furrowed. He wanted to ask what she was thinking. He almost did, but he spoke no Orcish, and he knew she would not understand Purrisien.

Then the orc trudged back into the woods. Strapped to her back was a sword nearly as tall as she was. Jean continued to stare after her for some time, twirling his tail between his fingers. The field grew darker and darker. If they were going to attack, the orcs would wait until morning. It was far too late to do anything before darkness fell. They probably wouldn't attack, of course. This far out on the frontier, there were always orcs in the woods. But that didn't make him feel better.

He shook his head and herded the sheep back towards his family's farm. There was little else to be done, and it wasn't safe for anybody to be out and about at night. He jumped at every shadow as the sheep meandered back towards their enclosure. The Void fell quickly this late in the year.

His younger sister, Misha, rushed to greet him when he was close to the pen. "Jean!" she called. Her green eyes gleamed in the twilight, and her undyed woolen frock almost seemed to glow. "It's almost dark. What took you so long?"

"Sorry," he said. He smiled for her. "I guess I was just distracted."

"Jean!" She batted at his nose. "You have to stop spacing out like that. You'll lose more of our sheep."

Jean waved her paw away from his face. "The sheep are fine." He looked around the yard. "Is father around?"

Misha cocked her head. "Why?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"

Jean frowned at her. "Am I not allowed to want to talk to him?"

"You normally try to avoid fights," Misha said.

"We don't always fight with each other," Jean said.

"You really do," said Misha, straightening Jean's open vest.

Jean sighed and ran his paws over his ears. "Have you seen him or not?"

Misha shrugged. "He's already inside. He started supper without you."

Jean bowed his head. "Of course he did."

Once the flock was safely locked up, Jean and Misha headed into the house. It was a very modern farmhouse, complete with a large water tank for the hawkfins imported all the way from Purrí. Their father had built it himself when Jean was still a kitten. He still boasted about it being one of the oldest buildings in Champ-sur-Branche and always stood up straighter with his ears held high when he talked about being on the forefront of the Purrisien expansion into the east. Jean couldn't really blame him. There was something exciting, something fulfilling about being a part of the Purrisiens' struggle to take their place as a significant force in Serinor.

But a struggle it was. Purrí itself was peaceful enough, but any land the Purrisiens claimed had to be taken from either the orcs or the dragons. And neither was particularly amenable to losing land.

"You're late," said Jean's father when he and Misha entered the dining room. The fire in the hearth and the fish oil lamps along the walls kept the black of the night outside the house.

Jean clenched his teeth. Misha had been right, of course. She typically was. "Hello, Father," Jean said.

"What were you worrying about this time?" his father asked. Their father had taken off his shirt, and his gray tabby stripes were mussed and dusty. "Werewolves? Dragon attacks?"

"Orcs," said Jean. He took a place at the table. He smoothed his own tousled fur.

His father laughed. "Oh, orcs was it? And what were these orcs doing?"

Jean forced himself to fill his plate with that night's overcooked chicken. Misha may have been distressingly insightful, but she had not learned how to cook before their mother died. "The one I saw was just watching me from the tree line," he said.

His father's laughter died, and Misha gasped. "You saw an orc?" Misha asked.

"There are always orcs in the woods," their father said. His whiskers twitched, and his eyes flashed in the lamplight. "What was it doing?"

"She just watched me and my sheep," Jean said. "Then she turned around and went back into the woods."

"Weren't you frightened?" Misha asked.

Jean shook his head. "I should have been, but I wasn’t." He flicked his tail. "She didn't seem scary. She was just watching me. And the sheep especially. It was like…" He batted at the air but could not knock free the word he wanted. "Like she felt like a shepherd herself," he said finally. "Like she missed sheep."

Misha shook her head. "You have such a weird imagination," she said.

"Were there others?" their father asked.

"No," Jean said. "Just her."

"Was she armed?" asked his father.

"Oh yes," Jean said. "She had a sword as big as she was. And her armor was completely covered in scales."

His father did not answer for some time, staring at him unblinking all the while. Then he turned his attention back to his meal. "I need you to drive the flock into town tomorrow and sell as many of them as you can."

Jean's jaw dropped. "What?"

"Use whatever money you earn to buy a cart and a horse." His father looked up. "If you can find one for sale. I suspect there's going to be a high demand for horses in the next few days."

"You're going to run away," Jean whispered. Misha, ever attentive to the mood of her remaining family, took her plate and slunk from the room.

"I am not," said Jean's father. "I expect the magistrate will be by to conscript one of us to help defend the city."

"I can fight," Jean said.

"No," his father said. "You cannot. You can drive away stray catoblepas or spook a lone werewolf to keep your flock safe. You don't know anything about fighting orcs."

"And whose fault is that?" said Jean. "You've fought in two campaigns against the orcs to defend Purrí and Champ-sur-Branche both. And you never bothered to teach me or Misha a thing!"

His father's eyes narrowed. "I fought so you wouldn't have to."

Jean hissed. "Then you're an idiot. What happens if the Syn-spawn attack in force? And like you said, there's always orcs in the woods."

"An idiot, am I?" his father said. "Well, better that than a coward."

"I'm not afraid!" Jean shouted. "I told you I wasn't afraid of that orc."

"More fool you," his father shouted back. "You're not afraid of orcs, but you're afraid of losing your home. Your flock. Afraid you'll never be as ferocious as your father." The older cat bared his fangs and hissed. Jean recoiled. "And you'd rather die than see those fears realized. You think running into a fight you cannot win makes you brave? Do you?"

"How do you know we can't win?" Jean said. "Because we certainly won't win if we don't even fight."

His father laughed. "How did you get so much imagination and so few brains? Have you not seen the visitors in town recently?"

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Jean cocked his head. "The Gortziy?"

"Of course, the Gortziy," his father said. "And why do you think there are dwarves here?"

Jean flicked his tail. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"They're building a tunnel under the sea to Coatli Island," his father said. "And the Amin terminus is just outside Champ-sur-Branche."

"So what?" asked Jean.

"Who would be very interested in easy access to the island with the largest draconic hatchery north of the Drab Mountains?" his father asked.

Jean's heart sank. "The orcs."

His father laughed. "And who's going to try to stop them?"

Jean didn't answer. His imagination could take it from there. It wasn't just the orcs in the woods. The dragons would never just let the dwarves dig a tunnel out to their hatchery. The orcs would march straight through in the endless waves of the Horde and knock down every ziggurat on the entire island. But the orcs would know the dragons would try to stop the construction and would do everything they could to protect it.

It wasn't just the usual scouts and raiders in the woods. The Horde was coming.

Jean looked up at his father. "You already knew."

"I knew the day the Gortziy told us what they were planning," he replied. "But I thought we had more time." He looked away and smoothed his whiskers. "So tomorrow, you're going to sell the flock and buy a horse and a cart. Then you and your sister are going to head for Purrí."

"What?" Jean said. "After all that, you're going to stay and fight?"

"I'm going to stay and help with the evacuation," his father answered. "I'm going to have to give this same speech more than once, I suspect. But you don't have time to wait for that." He looked at his son. There was a pause. "I'll join you along the road as soon as I can."

Jean stared back. His whiskers twitched as he tried to hold back tears. "Yes, Father."

----------------------------------------

The female orc was back the next day as Jean drove the flock into town. He stopped when he saw her. The orc considered his flock as she had the night before, then looked to where they were headed. After a moment, she turned back to him. She was closer than she had been the night before and the sun was brighter, so he could get a clearer look at her face. This time he was unsettled. Foreign though her features were, there was little mistaking her thoughts. Jean suspected he himself had inspected his sheep the same way she now inspected him when considering which was ready to slaughter. He gripped his sling staff tighter.

Then a smaller orc jogged out of the woods towards them. Jean began to panic. His father was right. He was a shepherd, not a soldier. He wouldn't be able to fight off one orc, much less two. But he couldn't leave the flock. It was the only way he and his sister would be able to afford to escape.

But the smaller orc stopped beside his comrade and began to speak to her. She didn't look away from Jean. Jean was struck then by just how big she actually was. The other orc seemed male, but he didn't even come up to her shoulder. Jean wasn't certain if the female was exceptionally tall or the male was unusually small. He'd never really seen orcs in person before.

The female barked something in the guttural language of the orcs and stalked back towards the woods. The male watched her leave, shouting after her in a tone Jean recognized as disbelief. When she was gone, he turned back to look at Jean. Then he put a hand over his eyes and sighed. After a moment and another sigh, he shook his head and approached Jean.

As the orc got closer, Jean could tell that he must have been small for an orc. He couldn't have been more than a few inches taller than Jean himself. But the scars crisscrossing the bare, grayish-green skin of his face and arms, his missing left tusk, and the dragon scales adorning his skirted armor did not suggest to Jean that the orc was any stranger to violence. Jean darted to the far side of his flock, brandishing his sling staff. "Stay back!" he shouted.

The orc held up a hand. "Friend," he said. Then he shook his head. "No. Wrong word."

Jean blinked. "You speak Purrisien?"

"Bad," the orc said. He sighed. "Cat language strange. Dragon easier."

Jean's eyes widened. "You speak Draconic?"

"Yes." The orc put a hand to his chest. "My name is Wulfgar." He pointed at the flock. "Sergeant Hilgard wants one."

Jean was silent for a moment. That couldn't be what the orc meant. "You want to buy my sheep?"

"Buy sheep?" Wulfgar repeated, trying out the words. Then he nodded and help up a finger. "Buy one sheep." Then he looked over his shoulder to where the female had gone. "Two sheep," he said, turning back.

"How much are you offering?" Jean asked. Was he really haggling with an orc? "They're all devenomed, so I'll have to charge extra for that."

"Sergeant Hilgard says kill you and take," Wulfgar said. He dug around in a small pouch hanging against the right hip of his leather skirt. "But I not want. Buy easier." Wulfgar pulled his hand out of his purse, bringing with it a small collection of golden coins. The orc held them out to Jean. "Two sheep."

Jean's jaw dropped. Those were dragon-forged coins, and enough of them to buy half his flock. "Only two?" he asked.

"I can carry two," Wulfgar said.

Jean shrugged. "Two sheep." He walked around the flock and took the gold from Wulfgar. Then he helped the orc pick the biggest two sheep he had. When Wulfgar was ready to leave, Jean smiled at him. "Are all orcs like you? You're not bad at all."

Wulfgar sighed, staring off into the woods. "No. Are bad. Cats dead at sunset." He glanced back at Jean. "Cat want to leave." Then he took his sheep and left. When one escaped his grasp, he drew a spear that had been bound to his back and impaled the sheep before it got more than a meter from him. He dragged it, bleating, by his spear into the woods.

Jean wrung his tail as he watched the orc disappear among the trees. Once the orc was gone, he stared instead at the trail of blood the sheep had left. That could as easily have been him. He'd not even noticed Wulfgar's spear until it was in the sheep. As reasonable as Wulfgar had seemed, he was still an orc. How much harder could it have been for somebody so obviously skilled with his weapon to kill an untrained Purrisien than it was to spend a fortune buying sheep? And if Wulfgar was reporting to a sergeant, he was only a grunt. The weakest of the horde. What must Sergeant Hilgard be like? How could anybody seem so normal on the surface and still be so ready to kill?

The bleating of a nearby sheep pulled Jean from his reverie. "Sorry," Jean told it. "Let's keep moving." He gathered his things and began driving the sheep forward again, counting the gold coins as they went. He wouldn't even need to sell another sheep to buy his horse and cart.

He had to fight to get into the city at all. It seemed that every Purrisien in Champ-sur-Branche was on their way out of town with as much as they could load onto their horses, their wagons, or their own backs. There was a part of Jean that was still incensed that his friends, his people, would just pack up and leave when faced with a threat of this nature. That they would give up their homes and their lands without a fight. But then he once again saw Wulfgar dragging a dying sheep into the woods, and he knew that he had no room to criticize any of the others.

He traded the entire flock for a cart and the only mount left in the entire city of Champ-sur-Branche: an old, blind nag that couldn't have been more than two generations removed from the nightmares. The stray, orange tom who took the sheep was immediately suspicious when Jean made his offer. "Okay," René said. "I know you don't like me, and I know you're not stupid. What's wrong with your sheep?"

"There's nothing wrong with my sheep," Jean insisted.

"Did you stop devenoming them after your mother died doing it?" René asked. "A flock of devenomed sheep is worth ten times my cart and horse."

Jean flattened his ears and fought back a hiss. "They're all fully devenomed," he said. "Most of them have even lost their spitting reflex."

René stared at him, unblinking. "This is about the orcs, isn't it?" he asked eventually.

"Do you want the sheep or not?" Jean asked.

René considered a moment longer, staring at the bustle around the village livestock yards. "Fine," he said. "I can probably pawn them off for gold in the next couple days." René passed the lead of the horse to Jean. "Just point her in right direction and she'll go."

Jean wasn't thrilled about the prospect, but the trade meant he didn't have to spend a single piece of the dragon gold. "Thanks," he said.

"How's your sister?" René asked as Jean took the lead.

Jean's tail bristled. "She's twelve," he said.

René's tail twitched and his pupils widened. "I guess you've got a full four years to plan her coming-of-age party then," the tom said. "Since you're the woman of the house now."

"At least she has somebody to plan hers," Jean said. He put a paw to his face. "Wasn't yours supposed to be last month? Did I miss it?" Jean asked. René bared his fangs and let out a yowling hiss, but Jean just took his horse and left.

The nag did much better than Jean had expected on the way back to his family's farm. But though the animal seemed quite reliable, she was not fast. For the first time in his life, Jean wished their farm were a little closer to town. The sun had already passed its peak, and Jean found he could not stop checking its progress towards the horizon. Wulfgar had said they would be dead at sunset. He could not decide if that meant the attack would come at sunset, or if it would be over by sunset.

When he crested the hill just before reaching home, he got his answer. A column of orcs was marching towards them from the north. Their farm would be among the first hit.

"Misha!" he cried.

But she was already waiting. She had seen him approaching and barged out of the house, carrying too many bags for her small frame. "What took you so long?" she called.

"Hurry!" Jean shouted back. "They're here."

She looked where he was pointing and clapped her hands to her muzzle, dropping the bags. A massive orc with drawn greatsword stood atop the grazing hill near their home, far ahead of the rest of the orcs. Jean knew it must be Sergeant Hilgard and wondered if, finally on the verge of killing them, she still wore the same impassive expression he'd seen before.

His father rushed out of the house and, without pausing to wonder what the killer atop the hill was thinking, grabbed two bags of food and sprinted towards Jean and the cart. "If it's not food or light, leave it!" he shouted at Misha.

"But our clothes…" Misha said.

"Now!" their father roared. "Jean, get this cart turned around and get moving. We'll catch up."

Jean struggled to get the horse facing the other direction while his father and sister loaded what seemed like very, very little into the cart. He told himself not to look back at the orcs but did anyway. Four other orcs had joined the female at the top of the hill. One, much smaller than the others, was doubled over and trying to catch his breath. Jean watched as Wulfgar looked up at the huge female as if he were saying something. She continued to stare as Jean's father rushed back into the farmhouse, leaving his children to try and pull on their backpacks by themselves. The female waved Wulfgar down the hill, and with what looked like a sigh, Wulfgar sprinted towards them, spear drawn.

Misha screamed, and their father charged back out of the house as Wulfgar drew near. He bore the sword and shield he'd kept mounted above the fireplace for years. "Bleib zurück!" their father shouted in Orcish.

Wulfgar slowed to a jog. "Ich will dich nicht verletzen."

"Lügner!" the old cat screamed. "Du wirst meine Kinder nicht mitnehmen!" And he charged at the orc, brandishing his sword.

Wulfgar sighed and, turning slightly, blocked the blow with his upper left arm. The sword bit deeply into the skin, but the orc barely flinched. Jean's father tried to get his sword free, but it would not come loose. Wulfgar scowled and, with another turn, drove his spear through the cat's unarmored midsection and into the ground behind him.

"No!" Jean shouted.

But Wulfgar had not finished. Still scowling, he yanked the sword from his arm and plunged it through Jean's father's neck. Then he knocked the cat and spear alike to the ground.

"Father!" Misha screamed.

"Cats want to leave!" Wulfgar shouted at them in Purrisien. He pointed at their father. "Fight and die. Leave and live. Only warning." Then, clutching at his bleeding arm, he jogged back towards the others.

It was difficult for Jean to restrain his sister as she tried to go and help their father while still guiding the horse. He wasn't certain how he managed. But he did. And he did not look back again.