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So she made it easier for him and stepped away after giving him one last little kiss to say goodbye. After that, Gregory willed himself to turn away and found that most of the camp was looking at him. Most of the faces he saw seemed concerned, though some were merely curious. He walked through them and onto the dirt path, making his way towards the proving grounds and feeling not entirely unlike someone on his way to meet his doom. Strangely, he found himself smiling at that thought. He couldn’t die out there, Janette would never forgive him and Algra would kill him all over again.
“Well then,” he said to himself as he walked over the road, “I’d better go kick some ass.”
* * * * *
The Runts were already halfway through the morning’s practice routine when he arrived at the proving grounds. He walked over to them, trying to ignore the stares of the other orcs around him. When he arrived beside his pack-mates, he gave them a nod of greeting as they each stopped their sparring to marvel at the fact he was still walking. After a brief moment of stunned silence, Ulf stepped forward to extend his arm out to the human.
“You return to us,” he said.
“If you’ll still have me.” Gregory shook Ulf’s offered arm in the orcish fashion with each holding to the other’s forearm.
“More fists are always welcome.”
“The First knows we couldn’t do much worse,” Nullik added.noveldrama
Ulf shot him a glare and the prankster immediately shut up. Gregory waited a moment before Ulf looked back to him to size him up. “You will train with Ulla today.”
At the alpha’s orders, Ulla stepped forwards with a somewhat bloodthirsty smile framing her small tusks. Gregory looked back to her and kept his expression cool. In truth he’d have liked to start out with the slim female orc in the pack, or even better, Nullik. They were at least his size. Ulla was larger and more muscular, though her figure retained a distinctly feminine shape. She reminded him of a somewhat more psychotic Algra.
Off to a brilliant start then.
He stepped past Ulf for Nullik and the slim female to offer him a basic chest-plate and a single club. The slender orc introduced herself as Frelki and on closer inspection he saw that she was quite a bit older than the rest of the pups. He didn’t rightly know how orc aging worked, but they shared many features with humans besides the tusks and the rich green skin. The rest of Frelki’s features settled her somewhere in her late twenties to early thirties. Even for a pack of supposed “pups” there was an even older orc amongst them. Seated on a fallen log, the massive orc with plenty of grey strands in his black hair was watching him whilst taking a drink from a water skin with his only arm. A dull metal pauldron-like piece of armour covered the shoulder where the other limb had been evidently cleaved away. The question of the one-armed orc in the Runts had been nagging Gregory for weeks, but he’d known better than to ask around about it. Orcs could get very touchy about matters of war and honour, and he guessed that One-Arm wasn’t exactly still fighting in the proving grounds without one of his limbs due to his feats of honour and bravery.
Unfortunately, Greg had no time for curiosity or questions as he came to face Ulla. The rest of the pack quickly gave them some space and settled in to watch the impending beat-down. Ulla was happy to get it over with and wasted no time at all in charging him down.
He could see the battle-rage burning fiercely in her eyes as she closed the distance between them. Weeks of training and a natural instinct for fighting brought forth the fear and the thrill of combat. Taking his favoured battle stance, he braced himself to meet that charge head on. It didn’t help. He’d given too much ground allowing Ulla to easily dodge his overhead blow and smash her club hard against his chest-plate. The armour just about managed to stop his ribs from breaking all over again. It wasn’t nearly as successful in keeping the air in his lungs, leaving him gasping and stunned. Ulla finished him off with ease, casually kicking him off his feet to send him plummeting forwards to the ground and finally turning her back on him.
“Well, that was encouraging,” Nullik sarcastically whispered to Frelki.
“Again!” Ulf roared.
Gregory took a deep breath, slammed his fists into the dirt and pushed himself up to his feet. Stupid. Training day and night with one of the deadliest warriors in the camp and it had taken barely more than a second into his first spar with another partner to forget everything he’d been taught. Snatching up his club, he turned back to Ulla who had circled about to face him again.
The second bout lasted a bit longer than the first. It took Ulla an entire six seconds to plant him in the dirt, this time on his back.
“Again!” The command came from Ulf before Gregory had even landed.
“This is brilliant,” Nullik said. “He can fall over so much that we’ll be out of the provings before the other packs can even get to the rest of us.”
Ulla was grinning maliciously as he pulled himself back up once more to face her. “The human grows soft between his bitch’s thighs.”
She didn’t know it at the time, but Ulla Strongblood very probably saved Gregory’s life with those words. They had an almost reverse zen-like effect on him, as all his fears and self-doubts seemed to seep away into one focused beam of rage. He no longer felt angry at himself, for he was suddenly filled with a wild and desperate need to beat the living shit out of her.
“Fuck this,” Gregory growled before throwing the unbalanced training club into the dirt and raising his fists instead.
Ulla laughed with glee at the human throwing away his weapon. She decided to break one of his bones to teach him an evidently much needed lesson about coming prepared.