Solam happily brought his Direwolf companion home. He immediately pitched a smaller tent beside his own for Frostfang and even connected the two tents.
Frostfang was the name of Solam's white Direwolf. Granny Karom had chosen it. Orcs were about as good at naming things as this author: not very. Give them a Direwolf to name, and they would call it something-fang or something-claw. Solam had no complaints, though. There were hardly any white Direwolves in the entire Warsong Clan, and not many Direwolves named Frostfang. That made Frostfang easy to pick out. He would never have the problem of shouting a name like Sharpfang or Fierceclaw and getting seven or eight Direwolves answering at once.
While Solam was joyfully setting up his companion's new home, his grandfather, Chief Kramsh, returned.
A few days earlier, Kramsh had gone with some of the tribe's warriors to the Forge Clan's settlement to trade for iron goods. In Avalon, the Forge Clan alone was known for its smithing. Legend held that it had forged most of the clans' ancestral weapons. Every year, the clans went there to trade. Avalon had no currency; everything was bartered, and every clan needed iron goods. The Forge Clan was also the only settled clan, so over time its home at Lava Mountain had become something like a market. Before spring turned to summer and autumn turned to winter, many clans headed there of their own accord to trade.
Kramsh had been chief for nearly thirty years. He had inherited the position from his father in his twenties, and from that day on, he had been the Warsong Clan's greatest warrior. That had never changed. His exploits were legendary throughout Avalon.
He had left Avalon to test himself in the outside world. He had wrestled giants, fought Trolls and ogres, battled human knights, witnessed the dazzling magic of Mages, and joined the Orcs of the northwest against savage armies of wild men and centaurs.
His most harrowing battle had been against a dragon. He and his companions had driven it off, but nearly all his companions had been killed or wounded. Kramsh himself had suffered grievous injuries and lost an eye.
Afterward, he had returned to Avalon and taken up the chieftainship. Those earlier feats were only stories, but the clan's Orcs had witnessed one deed with their own eyes: the old man had shouldered his ancestral battleaxe, gone alone after a Carnivorous Tyrannosaurus terrorizing the clan's grazing grounds, and chopped off its head. The skull, larger than a Thunder Beast, still hung above the camp gate. There were no dragons in Avalon; the Carnivorous Tyrannosaurus stood at the top of its food chain.
(The Carnivorous Tyrannosaurus was a terrifying apex predator with the strongest bite of any known land creature. It could grow to a dreadful fourteen meters long and more than 5.2 meters tall, weighing as much as fourteen tons. It ate any living thing it saw, sometimes even smaller members of its own kind. Despite its enormous bulk, it could run extremely fast. Strength 28, agility 12, constitution 19, intelligence 2, perception 15, charisma 10.)
Kramsh was an Orc of towering stature. By Orc standards, he ought to have had no regrets. He had lived a legendary life, fought epic battles, and brought honor and peace to his clan. He also had three outstanding sons.
But he did regret the loss of his youngest. He had believed the boy would someday become an even greater warrior than he was. Instead, his son had fallen in battle while still so young, glorious though that battle had been.
Orcs generally took death in stride, but not every father could calmly accept the loss of a son. Kramsh had never said it aloud, yet he believed his own negligence had let his youngest die so young. The boy had left Avalon early to test himself in the outside world. If Kramsh had been stricter and put more care into his training, perhaps he would not have fallen.
His son was gone, though, and dwelling on it would only deepen the grief. At least the boy had left a child behind, and that was some comfort. Yet whenever Kramsh thought of his grandson, he felt both affection and a headache coming on.
The headache came from the fact that the boy was half Orc and half Elf. The ancient feud between Orcs and Elves had faded into the distant past in Avalon, and no one cared about it anymore. Still, the boy was of mixed blood. The worldly old chief could see the distance between his grandson and the rest of the clan, even if no one openly rejected him.
The child was still young. Problems would come when he grew up. He looked different from everyone else, and finding a wife and starting a family would be difficult. Avalon Orcs had different tastes from people outside: without a powerful build and sharp tusks, a boy would look too delicate for any clan girl to fancy.
Yes, Solam's fine features, so unlike those of other Orcs, made him popular with the women while he was little. The clan's young wives and older women adored Solam, who was prettier than a girl. (Solam wept himself unconscious in the latrine.) But when it came to marriage, of course they wanted a manly man.
The old chief had seen the outside world, and its women did nothing for him. No breasts, no hips—there was nothing exciting about them. He had no idea how that fool son of his had become so smitten with an Elf woman. If the old man had ranked the continent's peoples by beauty, Elves would probably have landed somewhere in the middle, about level with ogres...
(Ogres were so hard to tell apart by sex that, to Avalon Orcs, Elves looked much the same. They could barely tell Elf men from Elf women. As for female curves—hah. Even an Avalon Orc child had bigger pectorals than those little buns.)
But the child had already been born, so there was no point dwelling on that now.
The good news was that Solam was clever and talented. Everyone else thought him frail, but the old man had been around. He knew plenty of warriors in the outside world lacked an Orc's physique without being any weaker in a fight. He had seen the boy fight, too: Solam had a good head for it and real potential. Given time, he might even surpass his late father.
Kramsh had therefore resolved to make Solam an excellent warrior, no matter what anyone said. Once the old man set his mind on something, he would not budge. Granny Karom had argued with him countless times, to no avail.
Lost in those thoughts, the old man reached his family's tents. He had barely jumped down from his Direwolf, One-Eye, when he saw his precious grandson bustling around beside his own tent, too busy even to notice his return.
"Ram, what are you doing? Your grandfather's home, and you can't even say hello?" the old man called in a booming voice.
"Oh. Welcome home," Solam replied without a trace of enthusiasm. He did not even look up from his work. "I'm making Frostfang a den."
"Frostfang? What's that?" The old man took no offense at Solam's tone. He turned to Karut, who had just come out to greet his father. Of course, only Solam could speak to the old man that way. If Karut had shown such disrespect, he would already have been beaten half to death.
"Granny Karom's Direwolf Shadow had pups. Ram picked a white one, so Granny Karom named him Frostfang," Karut answered dutifully. "And Ake? Didn't he get one? Surely Karom's wolf had more than one pup?" Ake was Krum. The old chief was usually stern, but his handling of names was strangely funny. He seemed particularly fond of sounds like ka, kru, ru, and rut.
Even with names he had chosen himself, he disliked using them in full. He was the one who had first started calling Solam "Ram," and he called his eldest grandson "Ake." Best of all, he called his three sons only "First," "Second," and "Third." He never used their full names.
"He got one. A black pup named Bloodfang. His eyes haven't opened yet, and Ake's keeping watch over him." As he spoke, Karut took the hide bag from One-Eye's back. Despite his name, the old man's Direwolf had both eyes. Kramsh had named him One-Eye to commemorate the eye he himself had lost.
One-Eye was something of a legend himself. He was nearly forty and still showed no sign of slowing down. Forty was already a ripe old age for a Direwolf, but One-Eye remained as lively as ever. Whenever a female came into heat, he was the first to take an interest. He could still thrash younger males competing for the right to mate. He had sired so many pups over the years that nearly every Direwolf in the current pack was related to him somehow...
"Dad, what iron goods did you get this time?" Karut hefted the large hide bag. It had some weight to it, so he asked out of curiosity.
"Some arrowheads and two pots." For nomads, few things mattered more. Arrowheads were needed for hunting and defending the herds from wild beasts, while pots were even more important. Food, cheese, milk tea—they all depended on pots. If they ate roast meat every day, their backsides would never survive it. Apparently, no matter how strong the body, that part remained tender.
"And some spearheads." Archery took a certain knack. For anyone who could not master a bow but had strength to spare, a throwing spear was a good choice. It gave them a ranged attack, at least.
"But these are the most important." The old man pulled two long bundles, tightly wrapped in fur, from the hide bag. "I went to plenty of trouble for these. That bastard Blackhand got my prized Tyrannosaurus hide, and he made me throw in my Swamp Giant Crocodile hide before he'd spend over a year making them. (The Swamp Giant Crocodile was an enormous crocodile eight meters long, with six legs beneath its belly. It lived in swamps and rivers and was an extremely dangerous predator: cunning and vicious. Strength 19, agility 12, constitution 18, intelligence 6, perception 13, charisma 8.)"
"Ram! Ake! Come here and see what your grandfather brought you!" the old man called, waving the bundles toward Solam.
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