The autumn came over the plain like a guest who never knocks.
One morning the air was different—not colder, not yet, but drier, clearer, as if someone had turned down the brightness of the world ever so slightly and pulled from the air the scent that had lingered through the summer. The grass along the edges of the fields began to change colour, a slow yellowing that crept inward from the outside.
Samuel noticed it while working. Jorcx said nothing about it, but he changed the order of tasks in the field—things that could once wait until afternoon were now done first thing in the morning. Samuel did not ask why. He simply followed.
He was beginning to understand that Jorcx navigated the year the way a man navigates a conversation he has had many times before. Every season had its own language, and Jorcx spoke it fluently. Samuel was learning fragments of it.
Dravan actually started showing up in the fields.
He appeared one morning beside Samuel, wearing an oversized work glove on his right hand and none on his left, and looked at Jorcx expectantly. Without even turning his head, Jorcx pointed toward a row at the edge of the field.
Dravan went there and began.
He worked badly.
But he worked.
Samuel said nothing. Dravan said nothing. Side by side they dug their rows, and Jorcx corrected Dravan with the same wordless gestures he had once used to correct Samuel—a brief adjustment of a grip, a small correction, then onward.
Around midday Dravan stopped and stretched his back.
"Hurts." "Yeah." "Still hurts for you?"
Samuel thought for a moment.
"Less than at the beginning."
Dravan nodded gravely, as though this were an important piece of knowledge that required consideration.
In those weeks two more faces became familiar in the fields. An orc woman named Setha, young, with a broad laugh she rarely showed but which appeared suddenly when it did, and a man named Barak who was so large that Samuel felt a step farther from the earth whenever he stood beside him. Barak spoke little and carried much—he was the one who moved the heavy crates, hauled the water barrels, and handled the tasks that would have taken two other people.
He treated Samuel the way he treated everyone else in the fields—not well, not badly, simply as someone who was there and working.
That was enough.
Setha laughed once when Samuel stumbled and managed to pour half a bucket of water over himself.
It was not a cruel laugh.
Just the laugh that follows something that simply happened.
Samuel looked at her, then at his soaked sleeve, and laughed briefly as well.
Setha went back to work.
But the laughter had existed.
Urag e'Zogtar rarely came to the fields. He had other responsibilities—the settlement, the organisation, the hundred small and large decisions that kept a community running. When he did come, he usually stayed only briefly, spoke with Jorcx, looked around, and left again.
On one of those days his gaze lingered on Samuel for a moment.
Not long. Just a moment.
Samuel kept working without looking up.
When he glanced over later, Urag was already speaking quietly with Jorcx. Jorcx nodded twice.
Then Urag left.
Samuel did not know what they had discussed.
Sometimes I wonder what he thinks of me. If he thinks of me at all.
That evening Gustov sat down beside him by the fire. He carried a bowl containing something warm and held it out without a word. Samuel took a sip. It was sharp and slightly bitter, some sort of herbal infusion he did not recognise.
"What is it?" "Something for the cold that's still coming." "The cold isn't here yet." "That's why you start now."
Samuel drank.
For a while they sat in silence. Firelight played across the faces of the orcs still awake—Greth muttering to himself, Bercx repairing a horse's reins, two women Samuel still did not know by name speaking quietly together.
"Gustov." "Hm." "How long did it take before your last place felt like home?"
Gustov was silent for a moment.
"Some people need a harvest. Some need a child to be born there." "And some?" "Some never feel it."
Samuel stared into the fire.
"And you?"
Gustov took a drink from his own bowl.
"Home is wherever the people I know are."
He said it without drama, as though it were a simple observation.
Samuel leaned back and looked up at the sky. The stars shone clear and distant overhead. Somewhere one of the watchdogs barked once and then fell silent.
He thought of Antony. Of Tyron. Of a city he could barely picture anymore.
I don't know whether I want to go home or whether I just want them to still be alive.
He let the thought go no further.
Dravan stopped by one last time, silently setting the flat stone he had once given Samuel beside his foot—Samuel must have left it somewhere—and then disappeared toward his shelter.
Samuel picked it up.
He slipped it into his jacket pocket.
The harvest began without announcement.
One morning Jorcx was in the field earlier than usual, and when Samuel arrived, Morra, Greth, Barak, and two other orcs he recognised by sight but did not yet know by name were already there. One was an older woman with a steady, measured stride named Thessa. The other was a young orc with a fresh scar running across his chin whom the others called Drox.
All of them carried baskets.
Jorcx glanced at Samuel and handed him one.
Samuel took it and stepped into line.
Harvesting was different from planting. No digging, no probing into the soil, but a concentrated, rhythmic motion—grasp, inspect, keep or discard. During the preceding weeks Jorcx had taught him how ripe produce should feel, how the stem yielded when handled correctly.
Samuel still made mistakes.
Some fruits he thought were ripe were not. Others he intended to leave behind were quietly picked by Morra and dropped into his basket.
He learned.
Drox worked quickly, with a visible impatience beneath the surface. He was the youngest worker in the field apart from Dravan, and the energy he did not spend on labour seemed to sit visibly in his shoulders. Once he cast Samuel a brief glance.
Not hostile.
Assessing.
The sort of look that said: I still haven't decided what I think of you.
Samuel returned it briefly and looked back to his work.
By midday the first rows were finished. Jorcx studied the filled baskets for a while, then gave a short nod.
It was not a large nod.
But over the past weeks Samuel had learned what Jorcx's nods meant.
This one meant good.
I think that's the first time he's ever done that about my work.
He said nothing.
He picked up his empty basket and moved to the next row.
That afternoon Torck came out to the fields.
He brought something—a wooden rack that he drove into the ground, wide enough to hold several baskets side by side. Samuel watched him work. Torck moved with the same precise economy he always did. No wasted motions. No hesitation.
When he was finished, he straightened and looked briefly at the structure.
Samuel happened to be standing nearby.
Torck looked at him.
"Put the baskets on it."
Then he walked away.
Samuel placed the baskets onto the rack.
That's the first time Torck has directly asked me to do something.
He knew himself it was a small thing.
But small things were all that mattered here.
The evening after the first day of harvest felt different from the evenings before it.
The fire was larger. More orcs sat around it than usual. And there was something warm made from the harvested produce—a thick, sweet stew prepared jointly by Ystra and Thessa.
Samuel received a bowl without asking.
Ystra handed it to him without ceremony, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Vorzak h'Kaelor sat in his usual place at the edge of the fire, warming his hands around a bowl while telling the children a story. Samuel sat some distance away and listened.
Vorzak spoke about the harvest.
Not as labour, but as a conversation with the land—you take, so you give back. Not immediately. Not always in ways that can be seen. But the land remembers.
Samuel understood only half of it.
Yet he understood enough to know it was more than a story.
It was a worldview.
We have something like that too. Most people just don't say it out loud anymore.
Dravan sat down beside him.
He had already eaten half of his stew, and once he finished he simply leaned against Samuel's arm as though it were the most natural place in the world to sit.
Samuel did not move.
Vorzak continued.
Eventually, as the children grew sleepy and were collected one by one by their parents, Dravan remained where he was.
Someone—a broad-shouldered orc woman with a tired face, presumably his mother—approached the edge of the fire and looked at him.
Dravan looked back.
Then she glanced briefly at Samuel.
No smile. No gesture.
Just a brief look that said I see that he is here, and then her attention returned to Dravan.
"Come on."
Dravan got to his feet, muttered something that sounded vaguely like a complaint, and followed her.
Before disappearing completely into the darkness, he turned around one last time.
"Tomorrow again?" "Yeah."
Dravan vanished into the night.
Samuel remained where he was.
The bowl was empty. The fire burned steadily. Across from him Gustov was speaking quietly with Greth about something Samuel could not make out.
The night above the plain was wide and clear.
He thought about nothing in particular.
That was new.