The cold didn’t really sink into Duran, but even fully dressed and on the move, Hamish was shivering. Slone led the way to a rocky hill and they clambered up it, Hamish and Slone helping Duran along the way. Duran wished he was as physically fit as they were, but Hamish probably wished he wasn’t freezing his ass off just then, so it evened out.

“Look,” Slone said when they reached the top, pointing out above the trees towards what sat in the distance. Huge, icy mountains.

“That’s… what?” Hamish said. “That can’t be the frozen range.”

“Can’t be anything else, can it?”

“Well, that’s… not ideal,” Hamish said. “That puts us towards the far north of human territory, and Lainton’s to the far south. On foot, over rough terrain, that’s at least a two week walk home.”

“You got a compass?” Slone asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Hamish dug through one of the pockets in his bag and pulled out a compass. He looked at it, frowned, shook it and frowned again. “Wait, what?”

“Mountains got two sides to ‘em,” Slone said. “We’re on the other side.”

“That’s a problem,” Hamish said. “As far as I know, there’s only one way through the frozen range: the mountain pass. It’s dangerous, but the military just marched an entire army through there, and clearly most of them survived, so…”

“I am not going into human territory,” Duran said. “Maybe things are supposed to be different now, supposed to be changing, but that’s not a risk I’m willing to take. I’d sooner walk home on my own.”

“No, of course, you’re right,” Hamish said. “Didn’t you say Kit showed you an icy mountain? Hey, Kit, you know any secret paths through?”

Cookie opened her mouth.

Hamish sighed. “Fine. You can have the rest of the cheese.”

Only once the cheese was in Cookie’s mouth did Kit appear in front of them.

“No, I don’t,” Kit said.

“Oh, come on! That was a lot of cheese.”

“That’ll teach you not to try to talk to me every five minutes,” Kit said, staring out over the mountains. “The mountains are a living thing. They grew up out of the ground during the war. We crossed them when they were young. They’re much bigger now.”

“So can’t go through them,” Slone said. “Gotta go around. Kit, you know if we’re east or west of the humans right now?”

“That I can answer. We’re to their east.”

“Hamish, Libby gave you a map, right?”

“Oh, yeah.” Hamish dug through his bag until he found a rolled-up sheet of paper. He used a rock as a surface to lay it flat. “Half of it makes no sense to me.”

“Never been up this way myself, but here.” Slone tapped a point on the map marked with a little star that was somewhere on the coastline. “These symbols mean settlements we have contact with. If it’s on the coast that far up, that means it’s prob’ly by boat. We get there and I bet we can catch a boat back. Makes me seasick, but I’ll live.”

“Is it far?” Hamish asked.

“Eh.” Slone shrugged. “Hard to say. Map’s only accurate in a vague sorta way. Closer than walking the whole way, that’s for sure.”

“Kit, do you…” Hamish looked around, but Kit had already vanished again. Cookie opened her mouth. “Okay, point taken. My question wasn’t that important. What do you think, Duran?”

“I’ve said what I think. I’m not going through human territory. If Slone has an idea that doesn’t involve that, I trust him to know what’s best.”

“Then I guess the decision has been made,” Hamish said. “Let’s get moving so that I can stay warm. Duran, I hope you like holding hands, because I can’t feel mine.”

Hamish was a flirt and a tease by nature, and their current predicament only escalated those aspects of his personality. They held hands at all times, Duran frequently switching sides to make sure both of Hamish’s hands stayed warm, and whenever Hamish’s shivering got too intense they had to stop and huddle for a little while.

Not that Duran objected, but it was hard not to want more. Hard not to think about how snug and warm Hamish’s hands would be down his pants, for instance. Hard not to escalate past the line Hamish had established when it was already a bit more than just friendly.

Just after lunchtime, Slone held his arm out in front of them, drawing them to a sudden stop. “I smell something.”

“Ominously vague,” Hamish commented.

Slone drew a deep breath in through his nose. “Someone.”

“Not much better.”

Slone dropped his arm and started walking. “This way.”

Hamish gave Duran a shrug and they followed behind him.

After about a minute of walking, Slone slowed down and sniffed the air some more. “I think it’s an orc.”

“Is that good or bad?” Duran asked.

Slone shrugged. “Bit like asking if a human is good or bad. Or a mage or a werewolf or whatever. Some orcs are friendly, like the guards at The Spire. But you never know.”

“The big green guys with the tusky things on their faces?”

"Yeah, that's them," Slone confirmed.

They were the ones who had let Duran into The Spire after he told them he was there to inspect the glass. They’d looked pretty intimidating, but mostly they’d just been extremely stupid when Duran had actually tried talking to them.

They continued walking until they saw an orc with the carcass of a full-grown wild boar slung over her shoulder. She was watching them with a wrinkled brow, her head slightly ducked and angled to the side.

“Hello!” Slone called out. “We’re just on our way through. Hope you don’t mind.”

The orc sniffed the air. “What you?”

“A werewolf, a mage, and a human,” Slone said. “If you want us outta your space, just point us in a direction and we’ll get gone.”

“Why you here?” the orc asked.

“Just tryna head back home,” Slone said. “We’re a long way out. Haven’t been up this way before, so we don’t know where it’s okay to be. Don’t mean any harm to no one.”

“You eat pig?” the orc asked.

“If you’re sharing, we’d sure like some,” Slone said.

“Come,” the orc said, and then she turned and started walking away. They hurried to catch up.

“I’m Slone, by the way,” Slone said. “And this is Duran an’ Hamish.”

“Mog,” the orc said.

“Nice to meet you, Mog,” Hamish said. “We appreciate the hospitality.”

Mog made a sound of acknowledgement, but Duran wasn’t convinced she knew what ‘hospitality’ meant.

They followed Mog through the woods until they came to a village of stick and mud huts built between trees.

“Travellers,” Mog told the other orcs who approached, before unceremoniously dumping the boar on the ground.

A male orc leant in and sniffed Duran, his face so close Duran could feel his hot breath on his throat. Once he was satisfied, he gave Slone the same treatment, before finally moving on to Hamish.

Something about Hamish’s scent was far more interesting to him, however. He started by sniffing around Hamish’s throat as he had with Duran and Slone, and then moved to his armpits. When Hamish tried to lean away, the orc took hold of Hamish’s shirt and gently but firmly held him in place.

“Oh, hey,” Slone said as one of the orcs began stringing the boar up to be butchered. “If you don’t need the entrails, we got another friend who’d love ‘em. She don’t much care for strangers, but she’ll be around. One of the old ones.”

The orc who was tying the boar up gave a grunt of acknowledgement. “Old one. We feed.”

“Orcs generally got a lot of respect for the old ones,” Slone explained to Duran and Hamish. “Way they see it is that if somethings gonna be around long after they’re gone, makes sense to be good to it. You won’t be there to help your great-great-grandchildren, but maybe that old one you helped out will be.”

“Never know when you might need some mud to be eaten,” Hamish said, doing his best to ignore the orc who was still giving him a thorough sniffing. “Should I be worried about my new friend here?”

“I think he’s bein’ friendly,” Slone said. “Might be more friendly than you care for, though.”

“Hm,” Hamish said as the orc buried his face in the top of Hamish’s hair and drew in a deep breath. “I’ll let you know.”

There was a big fire burning in the middle of the village and Hamish gravitated towards it, his new orc friend still firmly attached to his side. Duran stayed with Slone, and they watched as the orcs gutted the boar and slopped its intestines into wooden buckets. 

“Where?” one of the orcs asked once the buckets were filled.

“Anywhere a bit away from the village,” Slone said. “She’ll have no trouble finding it.”

The orc grunted an acknowledgement, hefted the buckets, and led the way out of the village. They followed the orc until they reached a huge, hollow tree. The orc set the buckets in front of it and sat on a rock nearby.

“I don’t reckon she’ll come out while you’re here,” Slone said.

“Wait,” the orc said.

“All right,” Slone agreed.

Duran had spent most of his life entertaining himself with little more than his own thoughts. He had no problem sitting down on a tree root that was sticking out of the ground and spending his time studying the tusks that jutted up from the bottom jaw of the orc, his patchwork of clothes made of leather and fur, his pug nose, and his small, orange eyes that contrasted with his olive-green skin. The orc wasn’t handsome by any stretch of the imagination, but Duran got the feeling that wasn’t the sort of thing orcs worried about.

Slone wasn’t nearly as good at being still. He explored inside the hollow tree, climbed part way up it, brought Duran a crow’s feather he’d found, and disrupted an ant’s nest. He was just looking like he was considering stripping out of his clothes when Cookie jumped down from a nearby tree and strolled over.

“This one?” the orc asked.

“Yup, that’s her,” Slone confirmed.

Duran half expected the orc to retract his reverence now that he’d actually seen what Cookie looked like, but instead all he did was offer her a nod of acknowledgement as she went over to one of the buckets and started choking down a rope of intestines.

They sat and watched as Cookie consumed two large buckets of pig innards. By the time she was done, she’d eaten so much her belly physically protruded. 

She approached the orc, reached out two — fingers? Fingers was probably the closest word for what those were — covered in pig’s blood and other terrible fluids, and drew them down from the top of the orc’s forehead to the bridge of his nose. The orc dropped his head forward and made a quiet sound in the back of his throat.

Cookie crawled into the hollow of the tree, sprawled out on her back, and didn’t look like she planned on moving again any time soon.

The orc made another sound in the back of his throat and turned towards the village. “Meat is ready.”

They returned to the village and Mog immediately handed Duran a wooden slab piled with big chunks of cooked pork.

“Oh, um, thank you,” Duran said as he looked around. “Where’s Hamish?”

Mog pointed towards a hut on the far side of the village.

Duran thanked her and headed towards the hut. He poked his head through the door, but it was dark and empty inside. But… wait. He could hear something. He went back outside and circled around the hut.

Behind the hut, standing with his back pressed up against the stick wall, was Hamish. The orc that had been so enamoured with him was kneeling in front of him, Hamish’s cock down his throat and his own impressively large, green member in his hand.

Hamish watched Duran through slit eyes and, after a moment, beckoned him over.

Duran still wasn’t sure what to make of what was happening in front of him, but he wasn’t about to turn down a hit of free energy. He sat on the ground nearby and, since he didn’t know what else to do with himself, took a bite of the pork. It wasn’t bad.

Hamish was a brave man, trusting those tusks so close to his cock, though the orc seemed to be managing to keep them clear of the action. That was about the extent of the orc’s technique. He could certainly get Hamish’s cock a long way down his throat, but there was zero sense of rhythm or strategic use of tongue. He was basically just very enthusiastically sobering on Hamish’s cock.

But Hamish seemed to be into it. He had a firm grip on the orc’s long, black hair and was setting his own motion, his breaths coming fast and rough. The orc’s hand moved at a rapid pace on his own cock, an almost brutal act of self love.

Duran ate another bite of the pork.

The orc let out a loud grunt and shot his seed between Hamish’s feet, all over the sticks that formed the back wall of the hut. Hamish kept a firm hold of the orc’s hair and, after a few more thrusts, he pushed in deep and went still. Duran shuddered as an electric warmth blossomed through his body.

The orc enthusiastically cleaned Hamish’s cock with his mouth and then he stood, tucked his member away, and walked off without further acknowledging either of them.

Hamish did his pants up and sat down on the ground next to Duran. He took one of the pieces of pork and bit into it. “Mm. Not bad.”

“So you’ll have sex with an orc but not me, huh?” Duran asked. “I see how it is.”

“Hey, I invited you to share in my energy. I thought that was what you wanted.”

“I’m just teasing.”

“Are you, though?”

“I am now. Look, I didn’t want to talk about this because I was worried you would take it as evidence that you were right about me, but it did piss me off the way you just totally dismissed me right from the start just because I was a Companion. I was so mad I didn’t even try going after Tris or Roope. And it’s not because you were right. Or… not exactly. It was because you were exactly the right mix of right and wrong to get under my skin. If someone is just plain wrong, it’s not too hard to dismiss them and get over it. If they’re right, you can accept their words and learn and grow. You had the complete wrong idea about me, but what could I say? That I don’t have sexual trauma? Obviously I do. It made me so pissed off and there was nothing I could really do about it.”

“I’m sorry,” Hamish said. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think any of that proves me right about anything. You were upset because I didn’t treat you like an individual. That’s fair.”

“Well, I’m glad you understand now.” Duran said. “So… what’s getting sucked off by an orc like?”

Hamish let out a bark of laughter. “Kind of sloppy, I’ll admit, but there’s something about a man who could kill me with his dick that really gets my blood pumping.”

“Ah, damn. That’s a tough standard to meet for someone of my stature.”

“Oh, don’t worry, the list of things I’m into is a long one,” Hamish said. “But maybe we can talk about that later. I’m freezing.”

“Let’s go back to the fire.”