Turning to the side I spit out the collection of saliva and blood that had pooled in my mouth after the last hit to the face. Surprisingly the most annoying part of this training wasn’t the pain, it was the constant dust from the training area getting onto everything. Every time I was knocked down I would get a mouth full of dust or a face full of dirt. I would rather have the blood. To a troll, blood tastes pretty nice, even if it comes from your own split lip or broken tooth.

Shoving off the ground, the movement still feeling odd with my arms longer then my legs, I watched my brother frown as I prepared myself. Most of our training fights have gone in my favor. Brother’s fighting style consisted of overwhelming violence and relentless attacks, which at first was frightening and definitive, but once you have healed from head-on attacks a few times it becomes far less effective.

“Up. Good. Fight,” said our guard and trainer, Whisper.

I started to circle my brother as he hoisted his training club over his shoulder in his standard ready position. Our weapons were the most sophisticated device I had seen being created in the village. Two almost comically oversized tree limbs with the bashing end wrapped with cast-off fur and tied off with a tendon. Anything more complicated turned out to be scavenged from a hunted sentient and not troll made.

The overhead strike came in fast, my brothers favorite opening move used in almost every match to start. Stepping back I let his weapon strike the ground in front of me, the padded club leaving a deep indent even in the hard packed dirt and dust.

Swinging my own weapon left handed, from right to left, I slammed my weapon into the haft of my brother's club. While my hit was nowhere near hard enough to knock the weapon out of his hands or break it, my brother's insistence with putting his everything into every strike left him off balance. Turning my body as I moved towards him I slammed my elbow into his side. Not the most effective strike, especially when our bodies recover from bruises quickly, but that wasn’t the point.

Suddenly my brother started screaming and swinging his club in every direction, at one point he was even trying to spin around with his weapon! At moments like these, I was reminded that my siblings were only a few weeks old now. My brother is just swinging wildly at this point, eyes closed and teeth bared, sweat flying off his body as he swings his heavy weapon in every direction.

Once his swings start to slow I step in and jab him in the stomach with my club. Again, not the most effective attack, but it worked well enough. Falling down my brother just lays on the ground and huffs trying to regain his breath. Glancing at Whisper I hold out my hand for my prize.

With a less than pleased sounding grunt my burnt meat prize was tossed to me. Tearing off a bit I chucked the smaller bit to my brother who smiled widely as he snapped it up. Again with a negative head shake and grunting noise but Whisper didn’t say anything else about me sharing my prize.

In his usual taciturn manner Whisper ordered us done with training with one word, “Home.”

I had worried that learning the language would be a difficult and annoying chore, but it wasn’t. The language was so primitive that it might not even qualify as a language, it was a pidgin at best. No set grammar meaning you could string words together in any order. Words that mean a whole host of different things rather than a large number of words all slightly different in meaning. My name Gur-Dun meant ‘Son of Suffering’ or ‘little one of agony’ or ‘result of something uncomfortable that doesn’t go away’. Essentially ‘Gur’ means anything that is “unpleasant that lasts for a long time that isn’t death.”

My brother's name means ‘son of mistake’ or as I like to think of him ‘Oopsie!’ since the first time I figured out what ‘Dor’ meant was after someone tripped. Rah-so was harder to understand but I finally got it after the hunters returned one night without food. Daughter of Hungry.

Children apparently got the ‘Dun’ and ‘So’ ending which meant son or daughter, but no one else had a name which implied bad things. Whisper for example -it could be gust, silent, or a host of other options but Whisper seemed right- didn’t have a name which sounded bad. Everyone had something that sounded useful or helpful, the leader of the hunting party, the guy I have tentatively labeled the chief, was named Strong for example.

Mother was Happy.

Returning to our shelter (and once jail cells), I pulled out another staff and tried to see if I could figure out how to attach a heavy stone to it making a large stone club. The lack of weapons or even basic gear of any kind was still confusing me. Initially, I had assumed the person with the most equipment would be the person in charge. Strong on the other hand basically walked around naked, without even a loin cloth! The people with the most gear was us, the children.

We had been supplied with tunics, belts, shoes, pants, all cast-offs from hunts. The closest thing to gear was the large limbs which were used as hunting clubs. Not even spears were used.

Beyond the crude wood clubs, the only other real weapon that seemed to be in fashion was rock throwing which seemed to be the primary hunting weapon. Everything about this setup screamed a level of primitive life that I just couldn’t comprehend. Despite my first thought, none of the trolls were obviously mentally limited. Whisper, for example, had been trying to teach us combat techniques which were obviously well thought out. Despite the limited language, there were no difficulties expressing the full range of disgust, annoyance, and laughter which came with training children.

So then why did no one make anything but cast off crude weapons? Why did no one build any permanent buildings? Why was it that the strongest passed up weapons and gear and instead just used whatever was near on the hunt? Strong routinely lead the hunting party without even hauling a rock along, just using one wherever he found his quarry. It made no sense to me!

During my frustration my crude rock knife slipped and cut into my hand, prompting a bout of grumbling and throwing my ruined project away. Mother noticed my frustration and chucked a bit of burned food at me, which of course I split and passed part of it to my sister who had been hovering behind me watching.

It was the first morning in the village when our blatant food-based training had started. Following any direction gained us food and failure resulted in a troll level of ‘gentle’ beating. I understood the idea quickly and did my best to follow suit. My obvious efforts to garner friendship with my siblings by sharing was never shared the other way around, but the random snapping from them had quickly stopped. Now I had a little shadow who loved to watch everything I did. Hungry would often imitate me and cut on sticks and try to create weapons. I wasn’t sure if she was just trying to get more food from me or what, but the cuteness of the entire thing had caused more than one bit to be passed over to her so it was effective either way.

Eventually, the night came and with it the return of the hunting party. This hunt was again successful but unfortunately for my morals, I noticed more orcs in this hunt. The last few hunts had returned with more orcs each time and I was starting to worry about this trend.

While watching the deboning of an elk-like beast I noticed the sudden silence and that all the hunters quickly stood and looked towards the pathway to the village. There was a pregnant pause as everyone just listened for a moment, the dark hiding anything on the path. Then Strong grabbed a boulder near the footpath, hefted it over his head with a gigantic roar and threw the body sized stone down the path, the sounds of screaming following up from his action.

“Run!”

The first command I had heard Strong give, but one that everyone quickly followed. Everything was dropped right where it was, my sister and my brother ran directly after my mother, Whisper leading the troop up the pass through the mountain and away from the footpath. I never saw what had attacked, but the shouts and commands said it wasn’t a monster attack but sentients of some kind.

I could hear shouts and the sound of Strong roaring, the noise of boulders being lobbed down the path meeting flesh loud even as I ran away.

That night was a nightmare of running with the sound of blood pounding in my ears. Uphill was surprisingly easy, my long arms reaching forward and pulling the ground backward in a hunched four-legged gait while downhill was more a process of using my arms to slow by grabbing trees and rocks as I passed them. A few hours into our mad race Strong reached the back of the pack, his body peppered with arrows and still bleeding wounds. Given his regeneration, to still be healing this long after meant he must have experienced a truly horrific fight.

No one stopped, the entire night was spent running. The pack only slowed to let me and my siblings catch our breath, even then we still moved at a walk. Early in the morning, the tribe drifted away from the game path we had been following. Soon a large bellow and scuffle started ahead of us, when we reached the source of the noise it was clear a large lizard creature had been killed. Three limbs had already been yanked off and consumed. We were each given a part of the lizard when Strong reached the lizard, his wounds were healed, even the arrows had fallen out. His body was visibly thinner from it’s healing. Grabbing what was left of the lizard he chucked it over his shoulder and we continued our hike, now at a slightly slower pace. I watched in amazement as Strong slowly ate every part of the lizard while traveling at a jog.

Shortly after finishing his snack Strong passed the troop and continued ahead, eventually, he brought more game down and brought it back to the tribe. I still couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t using a weapon, but I was impressed with his capabilities none the less.

We continued our death march for three long days without stopping for nights or rain. Whisper kept the tribe going while Strong and the other hunters would race ahead to hunt. We didn’t travel as fast as a racing horse, but we marched faster and further than a human could, let alone what a troop of a hundred strong would be able to do.

On the fourth day, we slowed and the tribe bunched up in a small valley wash out. The recent rain had turned the washout into a small creek which everyone seemed willing to stand around in without a care for the cold water. Whisper kept everyone quite and huddled together near a bundle of trees, pushing more than one person out of the creek and up into the shadows. Strong and two other hunters hunched down and slowly moved up the creek and up between two large boulders. Shortly one hunter returned and waved everyone forward.

Passed the boulders was what seemed to be the sister settlement to our previous home. Crude huts of rock and broken wood, most rotted from a season of neglect. Two pathways passed through the village, one back the way we came through the creek and the other passing down and then up around and into the hills. Both pathways had easy eye lines from the village.

Once our mother showed us to our new home I collapsed into the mud of our little hovel and dropped into sleep surrounded by my brother and sister.