Dunzok dreamt of fire that night walls crumbling, men screaming, gold melting in rivers. When he woke, his guards were gone. The camp smelled of smoke.
He stumbled from his tent to find half the supply wagons aflame. Silk nets clung to the ground like cobwebs. The orcs still alive screamed as shadows darted among them goblins, swift and invisible, knives flashing red.
Vris’s cage was open.
He stepped from the dark wearing his broken chains as trophies, eyes burning gold and red. His smile was quiet, predatory, knowing.
“You wanted war,” he said. “I brought it.”
The Warchief roared, swinging his axe, but the blade met only wind. Vris vanished the ring flaring faintly on his finger. When Dunzok turned, the ruin knife was already pressed against his throat.
“You thought I was prey,” Vris whispered. “But I’m the pit you fell into.”
He didn’t kill him. Not yet. He needed something more valuable than blood belief.
Vris tossed Dunzok his axe. The orc caught it with an expression somewhere between surprise and suspicion, testing its weight before looking back at the goblin. Vris drew only Ruin, the dark knife looking almost laughably small against Dunzok's blade. “You wanted your chance,” Vris said, lowering into a crouch. “Take it.” Dunzok grinned and charged.
Vris was gone before the sword arrived. He bounded sideways onto a fallen timber, kicked from it, and sailed over a broken section of stone as Dunzok's blade crashed through the rotten wood behind him. The orc wheeled around and charged again. Vris retreated not frantically, but deliberately drawing Dunzok through the cluttered ruin where his size became a liability. A broken pillar forced Dunzok to turn his shoulders. Vris slipped beneath his sword arm and Ruin kissed across his ribs. Shallow. Barely more than a scratch.
Dunzok snarled and swung. Vris ducked, planted one hand against the earth, and kicked himself around the orc's flank. Another cut opened across the back of Dunzok's thigh. Then another along his forearm. Never deep. Never enough to finish him. Vris was whittling him apart, one insignificant wound at a time. Dunzok began realizing what the goblin was doing, and that realization only made him angrier. “Stand still!” he roared. Vris bounded atop a slab of broken masonry. “Why?”
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That did it. Dunzok came at him like an avalanche. Vris waited until the last possible instant before springing away. Dunzok's momentum carried him onto loose rubble; stone shifted beneath his boots and his balance broke for only a heartbeat. That was all Vris needed. He landed behind him, sliced the back of Dunzok's sword hand, then kicked hard against the wounded leg. The orc dropped to one knee. When he swung blindly behind himself, Vris was already somewhere else.
By the time Dunzok dragged himself upright again, blood ran from a dozen shallow wounds. Vris had been struck only once a glancing blow that had sent him tumbling but even that had taught him something. Dunzok was breathing hard now. Angry. Tired. His sword felt heavier with every swing. Vris circled him with Ruin hanging loosely from one hand. “You're stronger than me,” Vris admitted. Dunzok spat blood into the dirt. Vris's teeth showed. “That's why I'm not fighting your fight.”
Dunzok roared and made one final charge. Vris darted toward him this time, frighteningly fast, dropped beneath the sword, and slid through the dirt between the orc's legs. Ruin opened one final shallow line behind Dunzok's knee. The leg buckled. Dunzok crashed forward, and before he could recover Vris was sitting between his shoulders, one knee planted against his spine and Ruin resting against the side of his throat. Both of them went still. Vris could have opened it. Dunzok knew it. Instead, Vris withdrew the knife and climbed off. “If all I wanted was you dead,” he said, offering the fallen orc his hand, “I had easier ways to do it.”
“Kill me then, goblin,” the Warchief spat. “I’ll die laughing.”
Vris smiled. “Not if your knees bend. Besides you have a debt to settle with Fairehaven..”
He dropped the ruin knife and offered his clawed hand instead. “You wanted the city’s walls. You’ll have them. But you’ll march under my banner now.”
Dunzok stared at him at the warg shadows, the ogres looming behind, the spiders glittering like an audience of eyes. He saw not a goblin, but something more.
Slowly, grudgingly, the orc gripped the offered hand.
A new howl split the dawn Skara’s voice carried across the plains. The goblins answered it, the ogres roared, and even some orcs bellowed low in their throats.
The Southern Fang had grown teeth again. Something new was stirring within the Fanglord's chest as he gazed on the Orc warriors that now joined his ragged band of soldiers.