Chapter 1  

Lou

The cage stinks. I've been coming here every dawn for three weeks, and the smell never gets easier. Neither does the sight of him.

The orc. The beast who represents everything I've lost.

He's massive - easily eight feet of corded muscle and mottled gray-green skin. Scars crisscross his bare chest like a map of violence. His tusks curve up from his lower jaw, yellowed and chipped. The cage barely contains him. When he shifts, the iron bars groan.

Behind him, the wooden framework rises like a skeleton. The spit roast. Three villagers are working on it this morning - Bryn and two others whose names I don't know. They're adding metal bracing to the horizontal beam, testing the joints. It's nearly finished now. Massive. Built to hold something the size of an orc over flame.

I've seen spit roasts before. Smaller ones, for smaller sacrifices. I know what comes after the construction is done.

"Monster," I say. My voice is steady, righteous. "Butcher. Animal."

I spit at him through the bars. It's become ritual. His kind took my father. His kind took my brother Owain. Five years ago, when the orcs came howling out of the forest with their axes and their hunger for blood. I was seventeen. I hid in the cellar while men died screaming above me.

Maybe it was him. Maybe it was his clan, his brothers, his filthy horde. It doesn't matter. They're all the same. Beasts. Killers. Things that need to be put down.

The orc doesn't respond to my curse. He doesn't snarl or rage or grab at the bars like he did the first few days. Instead, he's kneeling in the filthy straw, head bowed, hands pressed together in front of his chest.

He's praying.

The guttural sounds roll through the quiet square - low, rhythmic. I don't understand the words. I don't want to. Animals don't pray. Animals don't have gods. Whatever sounds he's making, they're just noise. Mimicry of something he saw humans do, maybe. A pathetic attempt to seem like more than what he is.

But it looks like devotion. It sounds like devotion. My grandmother used to pray like that, before she died. Before the old ways were nearly forgotten.

I don't want to see this. I want him to be the monster I know he is.

He finishes and opens his eyes. They're amber - startling against his brutal features. He looks directly at me. Not with rage. Not with the animal fury I expect.

With something that looks almost like awareness.

My stomach clenches.

"You come every day," he says.

His voice is wrong. Too clear. Too careful. The Common is accented but understandable, like he's practiced it. Like he's trying to sound civilized.

I wasn't expecting him to speak. I don't want him to speak.

"You don't get to talk," I snap. "You don't get to use our language like you're people."

Something flickers across his face. I tell myself it's not hurt. Orcs don't feel hurt.

"I only meant—"

"Shut up." The words come out harsh, venomous. "You're meat. That's all you are. Meat for the Feast."

I gesture at the spit roast behind him. Let him see it. Let him understand what's coming.

He looks at the construction for a long moment. When he turns back to me, that impossible calm is still there. Like he's accepted it. Like he's not even afraid.

That's wrong too. He should be afraid. He should be raging and begging and showing me what he really is underneath whatever act this is.

Strange sounds drift from the forest then - distant, rhythmic. A pulse that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The sound makes my skin prickle. Even in daylight, even with the sun rising warm and gold over the square, those sounds carry a wrongness that settles in my bones.

Everyone knows to stay inside when darkness falls. Everyone knows what wanders in the woods when night comes. When Fallon's time draws near.

The orc hears the sounds too. His massive hands curl into fists. For the first time, I see something like fear cross his face - not of the cage, not of the spit roast, but of whatever makes that sound.

"They come for you at night," I say. Not a question. I've heard the stones hitting the cage in the darkness, heard things I don't want to think about. "Good. I hope they make you suffer."

He doesn't answer. Just closes his eyes briefly, like he's praying again.

The audacity of it - pretending to have a soul worth saving. Pretending his animal fears and animal pain matter.

Footsteps behind me. I turn to see Gado and Taran approaching across the square. Both men are tall and lean, with the weathered look of those who work with their hands. Both have scars on their faces and arms - thick, white marks that look like claw wounds. Neither can remember how they got them.

Gado is the older of the two, with gray streaking his dark hair. His eyes are pale, almost colorless. Taran is younger, maybe thirty, with ritual tattoos curling up his neck. Both wear the leather aprons of their work.

"Lou," Gado greets me with a nod. "Come to pay your respects to the offering?"

"Something like that."

They move past me to inspect the spit roast. Taran runs his hands along the metal bracing, testing the joints. Gado crouches to examine where the turning mechanism connects to the frame.

"It needs to be perfect for the Feast," Gado says, not looking at me. "The blessing depends on it."

"Strong enough?" Taran asks.

Gado glances at the orc, measuring him with the eye of a craftsman assessing material. "He's heavy. Four hundred pounds, maybe more. But yes. The frame will hold."

They speak about him like he's already dead. Like he's already on the spit, turning over flame, skin crisping and fat rendering. My mouth waters reflexively before disgust hits me like a fist.

I've tasted it before. At other Feasts, with other offerings. I know what roasted flesh tastes like, how it melts on your tongue, rich and forbidden and holy. The memory makes me sick now, but not for the reasons it should. The sickness isn't from what I've done - it's from the fact that I can't separate this orc in the cage from the meat he'll become.

Maybe because he keeps pretending to be more than that.

"Fallon will be pleased," Taran says, straightening. "We'll feed well."

"As we always do," Gado adds. He turns to me then, those pale eyes unreadable. "You're the Witness this year, Lou. It's a high honor. Your father would have been proud."

My throat tightens. My father, who died screaming with an orc axe in his chest. My brother, who I found in pieces in the yard.

Maybe this beast in the cage did it himself. Maybe he held the axe. Maybe he laughed while my family bled.

"I know my duty," I say.

"Good." Gado smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes. "Three weeks you've come to curse him. That's devotion. That's what Fallon needs. Hate makes the meat sweeter."

They leave, speaking in low tones about measurements and timing. I stand there, the strange sounds still echoing from the forest, and force myself to look at the orc again.

He's watching me. Still kneeling. Still impossibly calm.

I want to scream at him. I want to tell him to stop pretending. Stop praying like he has a god who cares. Stop looking at me with those golden amber eyes like he understands something I don't.

But I don't say anything. I just turn and walk away, my hands shaking with a rage I can't quite name.

The sun climbs higher. The cage stinks of piss and blood. The spit roast looms like a promise.

And the orc kneels in the filth with his impossible dignity, and I hate him for it.

I hate him for making me doubt, even for a second, that he's just an animal who deserves what's coming.