Greenbough was, surprisingly, not angry.

I guess that might have hurt.

“Pay attention orc,” he said. “The humans won’t help you regain your feet if you fall near them.” His massive hand gripped Adam’s shoulder and pulled him to his feet.

Adam began to retort before biting his tongue. The ancient orc would be within his rights to repay an insult with fists, and might. He forced a nod and continued on towards the well, only to pass it and keep walking, eyes glued to the ground in front of him.

The chief had been trying to make his point for a few days now. Adam wasn’t stupid. Everything the chief had emphasized was the real orc way to do things. He believed in training and becoming stronger, individually. A real orc lauded individual might, and victory was the result of pure power.

He hasn’t talked about a single tactic. He hasn’t trained a single formation. It’s just power and strength.

It was insanity to Adam. Camp Greenbough had fallen. A larger and stronger camp than theirs was destroyed by human tactics. The chief had to know what that meant. He had to see. He was refusing to acknowledge the implications.

Adam walked and walked with little thought of where he was going until a sour smell woke him up from his mental dialogue. He looked up to see he had wandered close to the nearby human village, the same village they had passed up in favor of the larger town during their raid.

Adam was not a human. He had not spent time in human villages, and had limited knowledge of how human villages operated. But even he knew they usually didn’t smell of rotting blood, and weren’t completely still beside the flies buzzing around dozens of corpses.

—

The land around the village was fairly clear, Adam could be reasonably confident that there wasn't a force laid in ambush for him. Still, he approached the village stealthily. As interesting as a slaughtered human settlement was, there was little point in his reconnaissance if he died before he could report back.

Adam entered the village, and it appeared truly empty. There were no living humans popping out of houses to cut him down. As for the dead, they were somewhat of a mystery. The hot sun and time had brought about bloat, decay, and stiffness that made it difficult to be certain what had happened to them.

An army had come through, surely. Humans sometimes fought among themselves, but Adam doubted there was much in the village worth fighting for. The village's value to the humans seemed to be in the production of food. It didn’t make sense to slay the food-producers.

Adam walked through the village for a while before he stumbled on better evidence. The scattered locations of the corpses implied an attack from multiple sides of the village. On one side, several of the corpses had more distinct injuries.

Bloat did not burst the skulls of the dead, and usually neither did the weapons humans favored. But orc clubs did, and while the shattered head bones of the human dead didn’t prove orcs had attacked the village, they strongly implied it.

The humans stink worse dead than alive.

There was no loot to be had, no glory. Just a dead town, slaughtered men, women, and children.

There was no longer any thought to give to sparring match losses. Adam started running back to the camp. Others needed to know about this.

—

From the camp gate, Adam went as directly to the war tent as he could. Luckily, this didn’t involve running into any of his team. He was sure they’d have questions about why he had left so quickly after the fight, questions that he wasn’t at all in the right frame of mind to answer after seeing the open-air human graveyard.

The flaps to the war tent were nearly always open during the day, with only the chief inside. They were only closed when the tent was being used by the chief for some other purpose, like the time before the orc raid.

Today, the flaps were drawn shut.

Usually, this would mean that Adam should wait until the tent opened up again but the closed-tent was not intended as an absolute deterrent. He was carrying important news that justified interrupting a meeting.

But as he drew closer, he realized just who was speaking, and how. It was a meeting of both chiefs, one that, from what he could tell, involved a good deal of disagreement.

—

It was good that the table was sturdy.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Both chiefs were seated, but barely. Their conversation had slowly intensified over the last hour, and as the disagreements had grown, their fists started to pound down on the table's surface and each of them leaned forward to emphasize their arguments. At this moment, Chief Greenbough was doing both.

“We have to strike first! You didn’t see them, Ironblood. It was an ocean of humans, more than I’ve ever seen. They have to be disrupted.”

“I just raided their town. They will be on high alert. Attacking now puts my camp in danger. I won’t take that risk.”

Outside the tent, Adam heard a chair creak as either Greenbough or the Chief - he couldn’t be certain which - stood up from the table.

“I respect you,” the Chief said softly. “I respect your loss. But now is not the time. I need time to make my people strong.”

“Attack, then! Even if you didn’t raid, they’d be on high alert. They are moving, Ironblood, whether we raid or not. Push them back, make them think twice, and create some space. Then you will have time to train your orcs.”

A single blow fell on the table. This time it was clear to Adam that it was his Chief doing the thumping.

“Enough. You’ve heard my answer.”

Adam heard the chief standing and moving towards the entrance of the tent. Without fully understanding why, he drew around the side of the tent to where the chief might pass by without noticing him.

Chief Greenbough followed behind the chief, “I’m warning you, Ironblood! Their army is coming! You can’t just wait for defeat!”

The chief did not turn, and continued to move off through the camp. Greenbough stood in a state of rage and frustration before moving to follow.

“Wait,” Adam spoke up. Greenbough looked down to see Adam’s hand on his arm, holding him back. “It was you, wasn’t it? You and your orcs. You ravaged the human village.”

Greenbough looked for a moment as if he might deny it, then paused, examining Adam.

“We did. Who else could it have been?”

“Why?”

Greenbough motioned Adam to follow as he began to walk through the camp in the opposite direction the chief had taken.

“What’s your name?”

“Adam.”

“The number of humans, Adam. There are too many. Even if we had twice the orcs, the humans can keep raising army after army. We stand no chance. Your camp stands no chance.”

“But that village had no fighters - none of any skill. Why kill them?” Adam trotted to keep up with the larger orc.

“The wagons,” Greenbough paused. They had approached the fire. “When we ran from the human attack, I saw their wagons. Dozens of them. I realized that an army that size must eat. And the food…”

“Has to come from somewhere.”

“Correct. I meant to present their deaths to your chief as a gift. The first move in weakening the army. But he can’t see it. He only thinks of the old ways. We need new ways, Adam.”

Yes. Yes, we do.

Adam surprised himself by beginning, unbidden, to explain what he had been attempting with his squad - the mobility, the ability to strike targets, destroy them, and then move away. He talked about how the formation could make orc strength stronger rather than weaker and how proper organization was the answer to the incoming human attack.

Greenbough understood.

—

Greenbough and his people had been reluctant to integrate with the camp, so it stood out to all the orcs of the camp when he talked with Adam over the campfire. Among those who noted the oddity were Sam, Luke, Max, and Dax.

“He’s over there. Why is he with the Greenbough orc?” said Sam.

“I doubt the chief will like it,” Dax said. He was nervously sharpening his spear edge with a rock, pretending not to watch Adam. “But it’s not as if there’s a rule against it. But there is a rule against eavesdropping.”

Max, who had been thinking about listening in on Adam's conversation, looked embarrassed. Slowly, each of the orcs lost interest.

Except Luke. Saying nothing, he watched long after the others had left.

—

The next day dawned, and training began anew.

The usual spars were organized, and again the orcs were better. Every training cycle was making a visible difference to how every member of the camp moved and fought, and the overall mood was heightened as more and more orcs took note of the improvements.

Dax had just got past Max’s defenses for a rare win when Adam arrived. Luke approached him immediately.

“It was a good fight yesterday - you had me. I got lucky.”

“No, no. You earned the win. It was a good move, letting go of your sword at the end. I wasn’t ready for it,” Adam gave a slight smile. He had something else to hold his attention now.

Niceties aside and the heavy events of the previous day on his mind, Adam had very little left to say to Luke. It was good that Luke did not mind short conversations, even those that ended abruptly. It was even better that Greenbough arrived at the training field with his iron-studded club.

Greenbough followed Ironblood’s example, setting up teams of orcs to face him, which he then scattered with his club. After a few repetitions of this, he motioned Adam over and took him aside for focused training, mostly consisting of breaking Adam’s guard and having him work on recovery times. During this, they began to talk in what was, relative to the training grounds, hushed voices.

Across the field, the other younger orcs took notice.

Luke eyes reflected the young and old orc sparring.

“It feels… wrong, somehow,” Max spoke up first.

“Max is right,” Sam said, glancing with worry at Adam and the dead camp’s chief. “Do you think we should tell the chief?”

Breaking his gaze, Luke said, “No. It’s not our business. And I think it might be for the best. Let's, uh, run a 3-on-1?”

The other orcs fanned out against him.

“So long as it’s you that starts,” Max said.

“Fine.”

—

Across the field, Adam and Greenbough took a break from training to watch the new fight. At first, the others pressed Luke hard, pushing him back and making him maneuver around obstacles to keep his footing.

But it was as if Luke progressed in skill during the match. Soon he was pressing back, forcing Max to move more to cover his vulnerable friends. This gave way to dominance. As Luke found his rhythm, he found gaps in the defense that the squad had no answer for. Finally, he managed to get past Max’s guard, down Sam, force a surrender from Dax, and isolate Max who knew the fight was lost.

“The quiet one with the sword. He’s your friend?”

“A… a part of my team, yes.”

“That one has the potential to become an ancient orc.”

Adam’s ear perked up.

“How do you become an ancient orc? The chief would never say.”

Greenbough paused, looking for a moment like he’d refuse to say, too. But, surprising Adam, he didn’t.

“Through death.”