How would his tribe members ever want to go back to normal hunting again? He chuckled. The D’Orcs had been unbelievably true to their word! This was the greatest honor an orc hunter could wish for, to be able to hunt like this, to be the ultimate predator. The adrenaline rush was amazing! Tal Gor had never felt so alive in his life.
He glanced back to ensure the other group members were also returning with their kills. They were doing well; Vespa and Bor Tal both had kills. Kirak Doth Nar, the other D’Orc in their group, was going in for his kill even as he watched, swooping down and landing on the gazelle’s back as if mounting it. However, instead of grabbing the neck to hold onto, he reached his huge claws around and slit the animal’s neck with his left hand before wrapping both arms around it and clamping his legs around the flanks. He then pulled up, lifting the still-twitching gazelle into the air.
Tal Gor grinned and waved his scythe to the others in triumph. “What a glorious day!” he yelled joyfully at the top of his lungs.
They reached the designated collection point. It took quite a bit longer to get back to it than it had coming outbound. Lugging the gazelle carcasses significantly reduced speed, although not proportionately different than lugging an animal on one’s back slowed one’s march, Tal Gor suddenly realized.
They came in low and slow. Schwarzenfürze released the body and continued on, finally coming to rest about two hundred feet away. They wanted to collect all the carcasses in one spot. Vespa dropped her gazelle and flew over to where Schwarzenfürze had landed. Both Vespa and Tal Gor were grinning in pleasure.
Bor Tal dropped his kill and flew to join them; he was laughing and shaking his scythe in the air. “This is the best way to hunt!” He shook his head and looked straight at Tal Gor. “I am so sorry for doubting your sanity, brother. If these are the visions caused by a viperclaw bite, then I want to be bitten every day!”
Kirak Doth Far had deposited his kill and was heading over to them. “Vespa, this is a great day indeed! I have longed to do this, to hunt the Planes of Orcs as my parents did. If only my father had survived to do this again. My mother shall revel when her turn comes!”
Tal Gor was puzzled. “So you have not done this before either?”
Vespa grinned at him. “Neither of us has. Virok and several of the others have. Kirak is second generation, I am fourth; only first generation D’Orcs have hunted, or for that matter warred upon the Planes of Orcs.”
“I am not sure I understand generation as you use it,” Bor Tal said.
“First generation D’Orcs were mighty orc warriors who were raised upon death to become D’Orcs, a warrior companion of Orcus. The later generations of D’Orcs were born in the Abyss to D’Orc parents. We have always been D’Orcs.”
Bor Tal was shaking his head. “You mean the first D’Orcs, the oldest ones, were once orcs like me, my tribe?”
Kirak Doth Far nodded. “My mother and father were both mighty warriors, my father of the Crooked Stick tribe nearly five thousand years ago. He grinned, remembering. “He would tell me of the great raids upon the wall of keeps guarding Ferundy, before the desolation. He was in the D’Orc raid that caused the desolation!”
Bor Tal was staring at Kirak Doth Far in awe. “Your father was at the Desolating?” Kirak nodded. “Ah, the tales he must have told.” Bor Tal sighed. “To hear firsthand of that battle. If I were not here, hunting with you on this D’Warg, I would not believe such a thing. It is simply too glorious!”
There was a whooping noise and a loud thump over by the carcasses. Soo An and Dider An Sep had just dropped a very large ox carcass. It had taken both of the D’Orc and Soo An’s D’Warg to carry the large carcass. The two started over towards the group.
“Dider An Sep, she is first generation,” Vespa told them. “She is of the Fen Horde on Romdan.” As the new arrivals came up, she asked them, “Good hunting?”
Soo An shook her head. “Damn oxen are too slow. It is very hard to slow down enough in a dive to get a clean kill! And once they start moving, they are nearly impossible to stop! The momentum is incredible!”
“It takes patience,” Dider An Sep said with a chuckle.
“D’Warg and D’Orc claws do work a lot better than crossbow bolts taking these wild oxen down.”
Tal Gor was enjoying the hunt talk. He had missed this so much. Of course, with Vespa standing right beside him, it was bit difficult to keep one’s eyes focused on who was speaking, unless it was Vespa herself. She was so enticing. The blood splatter on her cheek was so... He shook his head. He needed to focus on the hunt around him, enjoy being part of that and not be a mooncalf for a sexy woman.
“So why are you now needing to hunt on the Planes of Orcs after so long?” Bor Tal asked Vespa. Tal Gor had missed some of the conversation, but this brought his attention back.
Vespa nodded. “For many years, over four thousand in fact, after the fall of Orcus in Etterdam” — here the D’Orcs all made an odd gesture of respect — “we have not been able to get to the Planes of Orcs. All the D’Orc shamans who could do so perished with Lord Orcus or not long after.” She shook her head.
“What did you eat?” Soo An asked.
Vespa smiled. “D’Orcs are similar to demons, jötunn, djinn and similar beings in that we don’t need to eat or drink. Although we do enjoy it.”
“Now that Lord Tommus has returned as promised, we can once again hunt,” Dider said as Vespa nodded.
“Lord Tommus has returned? Was he there before?” Bor Tal asked.
Dider shook her head. “No, not exactly.”
Vespa continued, “A century after the debacle in Etterdam, a great shaman named Tiss-Arog-Dal foretold that Lord Orcus would return, reborn as a new demon prince, and that we would know him when he returned to us with his identical son and an entourage. It was foretold that he would locate and release the Wand of Orcus, thus restarting Mount Doom. He would finally end the dark status quo that had been established with his death in Etterdam.”
“And a few other assorted odd details,” Dider added, “not relevant at the moment.”
“So this Lord Tommus is Lord Orcus reborn?” Soo An asked.
“Well, that’s what the prophecy said, or something similar. It was in a rather convoluted and ambiguous language, as prophecies always are. But that is how we interpreted what was foretold. Every other interpretation we could come up with made no sense. There was some other nonsense about a book, but how many orcs have books?” Vespa looked at Tal Gor. “No offense shaman.”
“Uhm, I actually have only two books — quite a number of scrolls though,” Tal Gor said.
“Scrolls, I understand; they often have maps. Books are too long-winded, take up too much time,” Dider said. “Just tell me what I need to know, spare me the useless details.”
Bor Tal nodded. “Who do we fight, when do we fight, and where do we fight!”
Kirak nodded and smiled. “Exactly!”
“And who’s bringing the glargh for afterwards!” Dider added.
“We are not going to have enough glargh to wash down our meat after this giant hunt!” Soo Ann suddenly worried.
Vespa laughed. “You think you have a problem? We are hunting here and on other planes to feed two thousand D’Orcs. Getting enough glargh — or as we drink, x-glargh — is going to be a true challenge. We are going to need at least three dozen barrels!”
“The steward thinks she has some ideas on getting glargh to make x-glargh, but it is a lot to pull together on such short notice,” Dider said.
Bor Tal shrugged. “Well, I don’t know about three dozen, but you should be able to get a dozen barrels in Murgatroy.”