Adam’s group was the first back to camp. As they arrived, Adam immediately started working on rekindling their fire. It wouldn’t do much to help Max. He had lost a lot of blood on the way back to camp, and was doing visibly worse. But with blood loss came feeling colder, and the least Adam could do was to try to make him comfortable.

Dax was covered in sweat and breathing hard. They had moved quickly, and he had carried his brother the entire way. Adam had offered to split the load, but a single look from Dax shut that down. Max was his brother and this was the only way that Dax could share the burden of Max's pain. It couldn’t have been easy to keep pace all the way back to camp, but he didn’t complain.

Dax lowered Max down carefully, like he was afraid a sudden movement might shatter Max. He worked bandages around the wound as best he could. Adam suspected he knew that the wound was mortal, but couldn’t find the words to address it.

Max had fallen unconscious during the trip. The only reason Adam and Dax knew that he was still alive was his breathing and the occasional grunt of pain.

How do you tell your friend to face the truth, when the truth is that his brother is dying?

Yav returned to the camp soon after, covered in cuts, but not seriously injured in any way Adam could see. A miracle.

After several minutes, Greenbough crashed through the brush and trees at the edge of camp. He looked elated.

“I got the wagons. All of them. I’m not sure if it was all the grain but must have been most of it. That should slow the human bastards down.”

Seeing the look on Adam's face, Greenbough knew that something was wrong. A victory like the one they had achieved was worthy of celebration. As he took a closer look at the rest of the camp, he realized that it was Max.

“He’s wounded?”

Adam nodded. Greenbough walked over to Max and bent down to take a look, lifting his bandages to assess the wound. Any radiance he had in his face from their success immediately dimmed, replaced by grave knowledge. Any hope that Adam had held that the wound might not be as bad as he thought was immediately dashed. Greenbough had to have seen many wounds in his time, and his face indicated he had come to the same conclusion as Adam.

He locked eyes with Adam, silently asking if Adam knew. Adam didn't move, but his eyes told the story. In the meantime, Dax was desperately trying to tighten bandages, offering Max water or food, and generally doing anything and everything that occurred to him. He was frantic.

“Dax,” Greenbough said, softly. “Dax, stop.”

Dax didn’t stop. if anything, he sped up,

“DAX!” Greenbough roared. He grabbed Dax by the shoulders and forced him to face him. “Dax, there’s nothing you can do. Look at him. Look.”

Dax’s face fell. He looked at Max, who remained asleep.

“The humans won’t be far behind us. There’s nothing we can do for your brother. We have to go.”

“No. I won’t leave him to die.”

“He’s dying anyway. Nothing we can do will change that. Leave him.”

Dax looked at Adam, desperately. His eyes begged Adam to do something, anything.

“We are leaving, Dax.” Adam was surprised how firm his voice was. It sounded like the chief's voice. Dax’s face shifted from desperation to despair. Adam turned to Greenbough, “But Chief Greenbough, we'll bring Max. Dax and I will take turns carrying him. It won't slow us down.”

The rollercoaster of emotions on Dax's face would have been fun to watch but neither Adam nor Greenbough paid much attention to him. Greenbough face twisted in a slight rage as he approached Adam.

“We are not bringing him along. He’s dead. You have to know that.”

Adam knew that Greenbough spoke the truth. Max's wound was lethal even under the best circumstances. His one chance for survival was to be treated immediately by support orcs skilled in healing. But even those were long odds.

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The right strategic move was to leave Max with the hopes that he'd be able to delay the humans from chasing them. If nothing else, the humans would spend some time to finish their kill. That would buy the other orcs time. But, this wasn't a strategic decision for Adam.

“Chief Greenbough.” Adam looked back at the advancing ancient orc and, for the first time, appreciated how intimidating an ancient orc must seem up close. “Your plan to burn the human grains was good. But you were distracted. You wanted to kill humans, and we took new losses. I won't leave without Max.”

“That was…”

“We can spend this time arguing, or we can move. Max is injured, he's Dax's brother. We're still following your lead, but we're not sworn to you. Right now, we just want to get to the next camp. With Max,” Adam cut in.

Greenbough looked around the tent and saw Yav's face. He opens his mouth, then shut it. He might not need Adam or Dax, but they were two-thirds of his force. And Yav might not follow a leader that discarded a fellow orc, even if it was the right logical decision.

“Ok, let's pack and move,” Greenbough relented. He wasn't happy, but he didn't have a choice.

Max remained propped up against a log as the healthier orcs dismantled the camp. Greenbough was still visibly unhappy about the arrangement but looked past it at least long enough to help Max and Adam build a makeshift stretcher from tent canvas and branches. Within a few minutes, they were off.

—

Adam was always envious of the horses that the humans rode. Most animals fled as soon as they saw a lumbering green hunk of orc approaching. But in times like this, Adam could appreciate having an animal replace his tired legs.

The humans horses weren't very useful in battle. A simple snarl would make them flee in panic. Generations of hunting and instinct were hard to fight against. However, as indirect tools of pursuit, the horses were a human's best friend. On open ground, an orc couldn’t escape knights on horses. They'd follow until the orc was exhausted, and then dismount to finish the job.

That meant any effective retreat for Greenbough's group had to either go through rough terrain or else occur in conditions that made it impossible for humans to track orcs. It near the full moon and dry, so they couldn’t count on darkness to save them. That left negotiating rough trails and overgrown woods.

During one of their brief breaks, Greenbough brought out his map.

“Here we are. This is Camp Ironblood, and the town we attacked.” He pointed to another camp, further north and backed up against the mountains. “This is the camp we are headed to. Normally, we’d take this road. But it's still a day's journey where the humans can track and catch up to us.”

He indicated another line he had drawn on his map, one that went through so much rough terrain in random directions, it looked like a series of accidental slips of a pen.

“This is the route we have to take now. This leaves us in tree cover or on terrain too rough for horses. It’s not only longer, but much more treacherous. Especially considering…” He looked over at Dax caring for his brother, then quickly adjusted his planned wording. “Considering our circumstances.”

—

Adam had once noticed that the route from Camp Ironblood to a relatively near orc village meandered quite a bit, and had asked the chief about it.

“Why does it go back and forth?” He traced his finger from the camp straight to the village. “Why not go direct, like this?”

“You could try that. But I’ve been in that country, and I can tell you right now you wouldn’t like it. The way is usually the way for a reason, Adam.” The chief had smiled back with affection.

Back at reality, Adam was learning how right the chief had been. According to Greenbough, the nearest road made an oxbow bend around the mountain they were now climbing. That was the logical choice.

The illogical choice was trekking through the mountain like the orcs were doing. The poor excuse for a path they were using was eroded beyond recognition, and constantly threatened to reward the slightest slip with a plummet down a steep, endless slope.

The orcs started breathing in heaves, watched their footing, and managed to get over the mountain. They were rewarded with a marshy, fly ridden area that in turn opened up into a forest overgrown with unpleasant thorns that itched when they cut you.

It took days, but they finally made it through the worst of the obstacles. Max was somehow still holding on to life. He burned with fever and had only had a few moments of confused consciousness since they left camp, but he was still breathing.

“When we get through the last of this forest,” Greenbough said, “We reach the only part of the journey that we can’t make under some kind of cover. Camp Shatterspear is surrounded on three sides by plains, and backed up against a mountain we won’t be able to traverse.”

He pointed to the open-plains gap on his map.

“It’s not far, really. The plain would take about an hour to walk. Unless the knights anticipated every move we made, we should be fine.”

Despite the low likelihood of the knights being there, they made ready. They dumped non-essential items from their packs, tightened their boots, and strapped their packs as tightly as they could. Max's breathing had become more labored and less regular during the trip and Dax spent some time mopping Max’s brow and changing his bandages as part of his preparations. As they broke the treeline, the orcs were as ready as they could be.

For a moment, the change in the light blinded the entire party. As Adam’s eyes adjusted, he caught his first glimpse of camp Shatterspear. It was huge, even bigger than Greenbough's descriptions of his own camp with hundreds of orcs. Only a short stretch of plains stood between them and it.

Then a shout and point from Yav made Adam glance to the side. In the distance, there was the glint of five suits of armor, rapidly drawing near on horseback. They had been anticipated, and the knights were moving as quickly as they could to cut off their route to the orc camp.

It was going to be a race.