The first weeks passed in work.
Not in the grand, dramatic kind of work people remember, but in the quiet, exhausting kind you only feel in the evening when you sit down and your legs will not stop burning. The settlement grew slowly, not because the orcs were slow, but because every step had to be thought through. Wood had to be fetched. Earth had to be turned. Tools had to be repaired. And all of it with what they still had.
Samuel slept beneath one of the tarpaulins at the edge of the camp, on a thin blanket Gustov had given him. In the mornings he woke before the sun was properly up, lay still for a moment, and listened to the camp. Footsteps. The clatter of pots. A muted voice somewhere. The soft whinny of one of the mountain horses.
So it was not a dream after all.
He got up.
On the third day Gustov had told him to go to Jorcx. Not as a question, more as a statement.
"He needs hands in the fields. You have two of them."
Samuel had nodded and gone.
Jorcx g'Friedberg was a man who spoke little and watched a great deal. He was not tall for an orc, but broad, with hands that looked as though they were made from the same substance as the earth he worked — rough, dark, patient. He did not explain much. He showed.
The first morning in the field began with Samuel taking the spade by the wrong end.
Jorcx saw it. Said nothing. Took the spade briefly from Samuel's hand, turned it around, and handed it back.
Samuel dug.
After an hour his palms were on fire. After two hours a dull pain was pulling through his back, sinking deeper with every thrust. Jorcx worked beside him without pause, without visible effort, as though he were doing something as natural as breathing.
Working next to Jorcx was an orc woman Samuel did not yet know. She was about Gustov's age, with closely cropped hair and a face that looked as though it had already seen many harvests. Her name was Morra. Samuel learned this not because anyone told him, but because Jorcx once called her name as he threw a tool to her.
"Morra."
She caught it without looking.
Samuel watched her work. She had a way of reading the ground that was much like Jorcx's — a brief hesitation here, a hand into the soil there, then a small correction in the direction she dug. As if the earth had said something to her that she understood.
Around noon Morra sat down briefly, pulled something out of a cloth, and ate. She glanced over at Samuel, briefly, without any particular expression, then looked back down at her food.
Samuel sat down too and ate what he had.
No one spoke.
So this is my life now.
He thought it without bitterness. Only as a statement.
In the afternoon he made the next mistake. He dug too deep in a spot Jorcx had marked for sowing, loosening the earth in a way that was wrong — he could not quite say why; he did not know enough about it. Jorcx stopped, looked into the pit, knelt briefly, and shook his head once. Then he began layering the soil again the way it should have been.
Samuel helped him without asking.
Jorcx allowed it.
The settlement itself was growing behind them. Torck, a broad orc with a permanently calm expression, was working together with two others on the first permanent structures. Not houses — there was not enough material for that. But scaffolding, frames, outlines in wood and stone showing where walls would later stand. Torck worked slowly, but with a precision Samuel could not help noticing. Every strike landed exactly where it should. No piece of wood was measured twice.
In the evening Samuel returned to his sleeping place. His hands were raw, his back stiff. He sat by the fire and stretched out his legs.
A child — an orc boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, with ears sticking out and a curious gaze — sat down some distance away and stared at him. Openly, without shyness, the way children stare when they have not yet learned to hide it.
Samuel looked back.
The child pointed at his hands.
"Hurts?"
His Aeterweite accent was broad and rough, but the words were understandable.
Samuel lifted his hands and looked at the red patches on his palms.
"Yes."
The child nodded gravely, as though Samuel had confirmed something important, and got up again. Then he ran off.
Samuel watched him go.
What is your name, anyway, little one.
He did not know it. Not yet.
The fire crackled. Somewhere in the settlement someone called out a name. The mountain horses stood quietly on their tether. The evening sky over the plain was wide and clear, a deep blue that slowly turned to black and let the first stars through.
Samuel lay back and closed his eyes.
Tomorrow he would dig again.
The days all began the same way.
Up before the sun was up. Breakfast — usually a thin porridge from the stores, sometimes something left over from the night before. Then the fields.
Samuel learned slowly. Not because he was stupid, but because the knowledge needed here came from another world. Jorcx showed him how to prepare the earth for different plants, how deep, how loose, which direction toward the sun. He never explained why. He showed it once, sometimes twice, and then expected it to stick.
Usually it did not the first time.
Morra corrected him occasionally. Not with words, but simply by stepping next to him and demonstrating the movement he should have made. Samuel watched, nodded, tried again. She moved on without a comment.
He learned the boy's name.
Dravan.
He appeared at the fire every evening and sat in the same place as the first time — close enough to watch, far enough to run off quickly. Samuel ignored him at first. Then, one evening when Dravan was again staring at his hands, Samuel lifted one and showed him the hardened patches that had formed over the past weeks.
"Better already," he said.
Dravan leaned forward and examined them seriously.
"Smaller than Jorcx's." "Jorcx has done this his whole life."
Dravan thought for a moment.
"You do now too."
Samuel had to laugh briefly. Dravan seemed satisfied with that and ran off again.
The settlement changed. Torck's scaffolds became walls, the walls became rooms. The first permanent shelters arose — small, low, built from what they had, but solid. No more tarpaulins overhead. Real roofs.
Samuel helped carry things when Torck allowed it, which was not always the case. Torck preferred to work alone or with the orcs he knew. He did not make a scene of it — he would simply look at Samuel briefly when he came closer, and the way he looked at him was answer enough.
So, not this time.
Samuel carried the wood to the pile intended for Torck and left it at that.
Gustov watched all this from a distance. Sometimes he sat with Samuel in the evenings and they talked briefly — about work, about the weather, about small things that had happened during the day. Gustov never asked directly how Samuel was. He asked other things instead.
"Did Jorcx say anything today?" "Twice no and once with a look." "That is a lot for Jorcx."
Samuel looked at him.
"Was that a joke?"
Gustov did not answer, but the expression on his face was close enough.
One morning an orc woman named Ystra came out to the field and set a pot down beside the work area. She was young, perhaps Samuel's age, with long braided hair and a practical, direct look. She spoke briefly with Morra, nodded to Jorcx, and then looked over at Samuel.
"Food," she said, pointing at the pot.
Then she walked off again.
Samuel opened the pot. Porridge, warm, with something in it he could not name but which smelled good. He looked at Morra. She had already taken out her spoon.
He ate.
It was the first time anyone had brought him something on their own initiative without Gustov being behind it.
I do not even know whether she does that often. Maybe it was nothing.
But he thought about it all day.
The weeks layered over one another like strata of earth. Samuel dug, planted, carried, watched. His hands grew harder. His back grew used to the work. He learned the small signals Jorcx and Morra used when the weather changed — a certain lifting of the nose, a quick glance in one direction, a tool put down earlier than usual.
He learned to recognise Dravan before he saw him — by the steps, by the particular rustle he made when he sat down somewhere without wanting to admit it.
He learned that Torck checked the sky first thing every morning, always in the same direction, always with the same short nod afterwards, as though making a silent agreement with the day.
He learned that Vorzak sometimes told stories in the evenings, not for everyone, only for the children who gathered around him, and that the children became as silent then as Samuel had never otherwise seen them.
One evening Samuel remained standing and listened.
He did not understand everything. But he understood enough.
I am learning this world here not from books. I am learning it through earth under my nails and porridge at midday and a boy counting my calluses.
The fire crackled. Dravan sat beside him, this time a little closer than usual, eating in silence.
No one sent him away.
The first rain came in the fourth week.
Not gently, but all at once — as if the sky had waited long enough and now had no patience left. The plain drank in the water like something that had been thirsty for a very long time; the ground darkened, the grass bent under it, and the air smelled of wet earth and cold stone.
Samuel was in the field when it began. He stood still for a moment and let the rain fall over him, face lifted, eyes closed.
I no longer remember exactly how rain smelled where I come from.
Jorcx kept working beside him as though nothing had happened.
Samuel kept working too.
In the evenings after the rain, the settlement dried slowly and the work in the fields changed. Jorcx explained something to Samuel for the first time in more than two words. He stood beside a row of newly sprouted shoots, pointed to certain spots, and spoke in a calm, even tone about water distribution, about the direction the roots grew, about what this soil needed and what it did not need.
Samuel listened.
He did not understand everything. He did not know some of the terms, and some of the connections only made sense when Jorcx added a gesture. But he listened without interrupting, and Jorcx kept speaking without asking whether Samuel was following.
That was a kind of trust.
I do not think he does that with everyone.
Another orc became visible in the fields during those days — an older man named Greth, with a whitish beard that looked strangely soft on an orc face. He did not appear every day, and when he did he worked slowly, with a care that spoke of experience. He talked more than Jorcx and Morra combined, though mostly to himself — a quiet, steady murmur while he worked, like someone ticking off a long list as he read it aloud.
One midday he muttered something and glanced briefly at Samuel.
Samuel looked back.
"You watered the wrong row," Greth said. "The third or the fourth?" "The third. The fourth was right."
Samuel looked at the rows. He had indeed taken the wrong one.
"Thank you."
Greth kept muttering and working.
That was the first time anyone apart from Gustov, Jorcx, or Morra had spoken to him directly.
The days grew shorter. The sky sometimes hung low and grey over the plain, not threatening, only heavy, and in the evenings it became colder than it had been a few weeks before. The orcs responded with small adjustments — thicker clothes, more wood for the fire, the animals brought closer to the settlement.
One evening Bercx wordlessly brought Samuel a thicker cloak. He placed it beside him and walked on toward the horses.
Samuel looked at the cloak.
I wonder whether he did that of his own accord or whether Gustov asked him to.
He put it on. It was warm.
Dravan appeared as he did every evening. This time he brought something with him — a flat stone he held out to Samuel as though it were an important handover.
Samuel took it and looked at it. Grey, smooth, unremarkable.
"What is this?" "A good stone." "For what?"
Dravan thought for a moment.
"Don't know. But it is good."
Samuel laid the stone beside him at the fire. Dravan sat down, now almost at the same height as Samuel, and watched the flames.
No one spoke.
At some point, when the fire had died down and most of the orcs had already gone to sleep, Dravan got up and trotted off toward his shelter. He turned back once briefly.
"Fields again tomorrow?" "Yes." "Me too."
Then he was gone.
Samuel watched him leave.
I think he helps in the fields sometimes. I have not seen him doing it yet. Maybe tomorrow.
He stayed seated for a while longer, the flat stone in his hand, and let the last of the fire burn down. The plain was quiet and wide and dark, the sky full of stars as it always was here.
Somewhere beyond the shelters, two voices were still speaking softly to one another. Then that too fell silent.
Samuel put the stone into his jacket pocket.
He got up and went to sleep.