After Kegan’s conversation with Wangozak the orcs decided to hunt down the group that was pursuing Kegan. They weren't far away and only half as large as Kegan remembered them. Most of the creatures looked to be half dead from exhaustion. Only the three bone armored orcs of the group didn’t look tired.

It was just two volleys of arrows before all but the three bone armored orcs were dead or dying. Their armor looked incredibly thick, heavy, and solid. Kegan believed it was crafted by the bone sorceress.

Fifteen of the hog cavalry orcs dismounted and approached the bone knights carrying spears and poleaxes. Five more large orc bruisers followed closely behind wielding heavy iron clubs, mauls, and hammers.

The spears and polaxes were used to separate the bone knights and then bring them to the ground where they were defenseless. Then the group of five bruisers would move in and smash the bone knights. Kegan thought they were being a little excessive, the first bone knight was a puddle of gore and bone on the ground and they hadn’t stopped. Then he noticed a familiar effect. The bone armor was liquidizing and healing the wounds of the bone knights. The healing wasn’t enough to save the bone knights. In the end there were three piles of unrecognizable gore on the ground.

The hog cavalry rode deeper into the woods. Kegan was able to continue talking with the female orc to try and learn more. The first thing he tried to learn was her name, and it proved surprisingly difficult. They eventually settled on calling her Tam. Apparently it was somewhat shameful for her to have a name known to outsiders of the tribe. It was either because she was a woman or a child, but something was clearly being lost in translation.

He learned that Wangozak was Tam’s father. She knew the human language because she had been a scholar in the capital city of the orcs. She had studied with her mother Aparna in the orc capital for the last thirty years. Kegan was a little frustrated after hearing this. She had name dropped her mom casually, and Tam is clearly not a child. So his two theories for the naming weirdness were wrong. However, he decided against bringing the name conversation back up again.

Tam was aware of how humans were wiped out. She seemed a little ashamed to share the story, but Kegan dragged it out of her. Tam claimed that the sorcerer had somehow tricked the orcs and humans into being at war with each other. They fought for many centuries with neither side getting the upper hand. Then the sorcerer had secretly given magic gifts to the humans, which allowed the humans to slowly start winning the war.

In their desperation the orcs turned to the sorcerer for help. He agreed to help only if his armies would get sole rights to looting human cities. The orc chieftains did not think this request was strange at the time and quickly agreed to the conditions. Enslaving your enemies and stealing all they possessed was what made war profitable, and loot sharing agreements like this were not uncommon.

The sorcerer began taking orc volunteers and turning them into the bone knights that Kegan had witnessed earlier. The bone knights could heal wounds using their armor, and they could slowly steal bones from corpses to grow back their bone armor. At first this only slowed down the human advance, but as the number of bone knights grew, the orcs began to win more and more victories. The tide in the war turned completely around in under a year.

After the orcs had recaptured all of their lost territory, and a few extra cities as tribute they thought of the war as won and stopped fighting. However, the sorcerer did not stop fighting. He continued to take the bone knights to more and more human cities. The orc chieftains thought that the sorcerer was just enslaving humans, but instead he was exterminating all of them.

This made the orc chieftains uneasy and they demanded that the sorcerer stop the extermination. The sorcerer instead attacked the orcs. It was only then that the chieftains realized that the bone knights had been enslaved.

The orcs joined forces with the remaining humans to fight the sorcerer. But they both lost after eighteen years of fighting. The humans were wiped out. The orcs were scattered and lived nomadically for two generations. When they returned they found empty cities and towns. The sorcerer and the bone knights had retreated to a much smaller territory. In that territory were only a small number of bone knights, but many savage and backwards tribes of goblins and orcs.

It was discovered that the main weakness of the bone knights is that they were difficult to maintain. The bones could heal any ailment, old age, hunger, grievous wounds, but different types of healing required different amounts bone mass to heal. One of the most inefficient uses of bone mass was for sustenance and eating. The sorcerers’ bone knight army had nearly starved to death.

All of this had started about seven hundred years ago. Since that time there had been a series of wars with the sorcerer. The sorcerer would expand again and build up a large bone knight army. The orcs would fight for decades to slowly win back the territory they lost, usually by fighting a long war of attrition and starvation against the bone knights.

Kegan was confused at many points in the story, and it took about four days for Tam to explain all of this. She also had a habit of referring to all the various orc chiefs and listing out their full background and accomplishments. After about fifty names he had asked her to stop, she’d gotten offended and he dropped it. After a hundred names he got in the argument again. They had angrilly not talked with each other for a day before working out a compromise. She would get to describe one major orc figure for each major battle. Kegan was fascinated with the battles and how they were fought, so he was happy with the compromise.

During the time they had been talking the group of orc-hog cavalry had been riding back and forth through the woods to catch other groups of savage orcs and goblins. A day after Tam’s orc history tale was finished they ran into another group of the savage orcs and goblins being led by more bone knights.

There were about 15 of the bone knights this time. There were many savage orcs and goblins as well, but they were once again efficiently killed by the orc archers and skirmishers. There was then a bit of a standoff as the bone knights packed themselves into a dense formation. They moved around to the different dead bodies and absorbed the bones from the corpses. Their armor grew visibly thicker, bone shields generated on their arms, and they also grew wicked looking bone swords and spears.

Wangozak trotted over to Tam and Kegan, and Tam translated his commands for Kegan

“Today, you both will prove your right to be considered warriors among the orcs. If you fail, you will die, either by my hands or by the enemy’s. You will be given armor and weapons to fight when the time comes.”

Wangozak said something additional to Tam. Kegan was picking up bits of the orc language, but their facial expressions said plenty. Wangozak was disappointed in her, and she was ashamed.

Kegan and Tam were taken to an area that was piled with pieces of armor and weapons. There were other orcs suiting up as well. Two young female orcs, and five male orcs that looked somewhat short and young. Kegan thought that Tam was easily the oldest looking one here, and his body might have been the next oldest (though obviously not his actual age in this world which was still less than 1 year).

The armor and weapons looked heavily used. There were bloodstains still on some of them, rust on various pieces, and the leather strap looked worn out. He didn’t hesitate to put on the armor though, he knew the iron metal was better than his copper armor. He chose an iron mace, and a poleaxe as his weapons. These weapons seemed the best suited for fighting a shield formation, and he wish he’d had good versions of both of these weapons during his last life when he fought the empire’s soldiers.

The nine of them marched together with twenty five other orcs. The remaining twenty orcs mounted up on their hogs carrying large harpoons attached to chains. They seemed to have a plan of how to deal with the bone knights, but all they had told Kegan was to fight them head on.

The bone knights saw them approaching and started forming bone javelins. Once Kegan and the other orcs were twenty five yards away. The bone knights threw their javelins. The orcs with shields lifted them up to block the javelins, but not everyone had a shield, including Kegan. A javelin deflected off of a shield and hit him in the left shoulder joint. There was enough momentum in the javelin to bring him spinning to the ground. The other orcs passed him by in moments.

He yanked the javelin out, the wound wasn’t too bad, but any pressure on the left arm might make it much worse. Kegan hurd a wet gurgling sound to his right. One of the younger male orcs had gotten a javelin to the neck. The armor the orc was wearing was meant to protect the neck, but he hadn’t properly put it on.

A large pool of blood grew around the orc, and the struggling stopped as the orc passed out from lack of air. He’d never wake again. Kegan hated this part of fighting together with others. Seeing them die or suffer hurt him more than he thought it would. It was only a week ago that he was killing orcs himself, but that was different to him.

Kegan had picked himself back up and was running towards the melee between the orcs and bone knights. The orcs were keeping their distance, mostly just slamming down their weapons on the shields of the bone knights, trying to crack the shields or loosen their grip. Kegan reflected for a moment that a bone knight losing his shield would probably do more to harm him than losing his head.

The bone knights were packed in a dense four by four formation. The orcs had made a sort of half moon around the formation, just whacking away at it with their longer weapons. Kegan joined in on the left side of the formation. Hacking at the shields of the bone knights, and trying to pry them loose.

A minute later and no progress had been made. A bone knights in the middle of the formation had started blowing a horn to call for reinforcements.

Kegan heard rumbling to his left coming from behind the formation of bone knights. He was momentarily worried that their reinforcements had already arrived. But it was the hog cavalry.

Six of the largest hogs and largest orcs. Two pairs of hogs were in the front carrying one of huge harpoons he’d seen earlier. The two hogs trailing behind were carrying the thick chains extending from the harpoons.

The bone knights began throwing javelins at the hogs. But the riders and their hogs were wearing thick plate armor. It wasn’t until they got within 15 feet that javelins started penetrating the armor and sticking out at weird angles. This didn’t stop the two pairs of riders from heaving the harpoons together into the formation of bone knights.

The harpoons came into the formation at head height. One bone knight had lifted up his shield in time, but the result was the shield was shattered and the harpoon kept going right through his chest. The other harpoon had a similar effect, managing to pass through the shoulder of one bone knight and into the stomach of another.

Their bone armor and shields was liquifying and flowing into the wounds to stabilize them. They were trying to remove the harpoons when suddenly the chains attached to the harpoons went taut and the three bone knights were yanked out of the formation. There were other orcs waiting in the distance with maces and clubs that would finish them off.

The remaining twelve bone knights seemed to come to a collective decision that the turtle formation would not help them survive. They broke apart and charged the orcs surrounding them.

Kegan was no longer monitoring the battle, and was caught up in surviving the onslaught from the bone knights in front of him.

For a few seconds it looked like he would be overwhelmed by two of the bone knights, but some other orcs stepped in to fend off one of them.

Kegan was trying to use his poleaxe to keep a safe distance. But the bone knights fought in a different way than any opponent that Kegan was used to. Usually he could threaten an opponent with a hit if they opened up in the wrong way, but the bone knight didn’t care about taking hits. It was relentless, and if it wasn’t for Kegan’s armor he would have been dead a while ago.

He realized that the bone knight’s reckless attacks were also a weakness. Kegan feigned exhaustion and acted like he was trying to back away. The bone knight took the bait and went in for an aggressive swing. Kegan side stepped and met the bone knight’s wrist with his poleaxe. A normal warrior could have dropped their sword and saved their hand, but the bone knight’s armor was fused with the sword.

There was a loud crunch as Kegan’s poleaxe shattered the armor and severed the bone knight’s hand off at the wrist. Kegan was almost behind the bone knight and brought his poleaxe back around to slam it into the back of the knight’s head severing his spine. The bone knight fell limp.

However, the poleaxe was stuck in the armor. The healing of the bone knight was slowly pushing it out, but Kegan took a moment to look around and assess the battlefield.

Half of the orcs were down and out of the fight. Four of the bone knights were being pulverized on the ground. The other seven bone knights were engaged in melees with one or two orcs each, but they were winning.

Kegan had taken out his mace and began clubbing the bone knight in front of him. There was a rumble from behind him, and this time he was unsurprised to see the hog cavalry riding up. This time there were about ten individual riders all carrying their own harpoons. All of the downed bone knights, including Kegan’s, were harpooned and dragged away.

The orcs ganged up on the remaining bone knights, and one by one, they were also harpooned and dragged away. It was an effective method of neutralizing the knights. Loose bits of bone were knocked off, the harpoon injury had to constantly be healed, and their bodies were constantly being damaged from being dragged along.

Looking over the battlefield, Kegan felt a pit in his stomach. There were only five male orcs standing uninjured. The other orcs that had fought until the end seemed to have been running on battle rage, and now that it was over they had collapsed.

He began searching the battlefield looking for Tam. The first female orc he found had her helmet crushed inwards. He was pretty sure it was the wrong armor, and he was glad he wouldn’t have to lift up the helmet to double check.

Many of the orcs on the ground were groaning, and a few were screaming from their wounds. The five uninjured orcs were moving the dead bodies into a pile and the wounded were being dragged to a different area.

He heard a female orc scream out in pain when one of the orcs tried to move her. Kegan rushed over but quickly realized it wasn’t Tam that had screamed, because Tam was lying right next to her.

The chest piece tam was wearing was dented inwards by about two inches, and her left shield arm looked mangled and broken. He took off her helmet. She looked pale and didn’t seem to be breathing. Kegan broke the straps and clips for the chest armor. As soon as he did the chest armor lifted up and Tam’s eyes shot open and she gasped. The dent had been restricting her breathing.

As she gasped for air she closed her eyes and began quietly sobbing and clutching at he chest with her one good arm. Kegan realized she had broken ribs. There was little he could do for her. He squeezed her hand, “Be strong, you have lived. We have won.” She bit her lip and nodded.

Kegan went to help the other orcs clean up the battlefield. The group of orc cavalry came riding back a few minutes later. They helped clean up, and brought the mangled bone knight bodies back as well. They piled all the dead bodies into a pile and lit it on fire.

Wangozak was shouting orders. The wounded were being loaded up onto hogs to be carried off. The gear from the dead was being thrown into sacks on other hogs.

The efficiency was truly impressive, and before any enemies had even appeared the orcs were riding off towards their own lands.