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    Interlude


    Baroc


    The muzzle was downright uncomfortable.


    Baroc ground his teeth against the bitter iron pins that jutted between his molars. The roughshod leather tightened against his jowls in response, a truly unbearable sensation. He glowered and growled for all he was worth, but the Rak didn’t give a damn.


    He never did.


    The Rak reached from the folds of his robe and dangled a faded strip of cloth in front of Baroc’s nose as though he were baiting a trout. If Baroc had glowered before, his eyes now shot crimson. The Rak grinned, thinking Baroc had picked up the scent again. He was wrong. Baroc was simply deciding which limb he’d maul off the Rak first. It was his favorite question these days. And when he broke free, it would be an immense satisfaction to decide in the spur of the moment.


    Baroc twisted his snout, but the muzzle snapped him back in place, reminding him that day was far off. Right now, his was a life of humiliation. The muzzle was one thing, but the scent? Since when did he need the scent draped upon his snout to pick a trail?


    Even among his kin of the Shadow Peak, Baroc had been the sharpest chaser. Naturally, he’d recognized the scent long before the Rak had set his grubby feet in front of him. He first caught whiff when the Rak had returned from scouting ahead. He’d been cavorting around the cooking fire, embalming himself in tinctures of salt, cayenne, and thyme, yet he could still smell it.


    If there was one thing Baroc had learned this past year in captivity, it was that scent. The smell that dwelled on a certain torn cloth in the pocket of a certain Rak chiefsman. The stench of another particular Rak.


    Baroc’s snout flared, subconsciously retracing familiar ground as the Rak gave the rag a final twirl. Baroc breathed it in deep, letting the stale taste settle deep within—iron, hunger… and fear. The scent twisted in Baroc’s gut—entirely distasteful. It was a waste of his talents.


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    “Lead” the Rak said. Baroc instinctively growled—a deeper lower grumble in his throat than his usual—at the command but that earned him a strong whack of the stick in the yak''s hands.


    “Stupid fucking dogman,” the Rak spat as he thrashed Baroc with his stick. Baroc tried to recoil but the stiff poles affixed to his collar locked him in place taking the brute of the attack. He hated how he whined each time the stick struck him. He was of the Shadow Peaks Pack, he was better than whining, but it came out regardless of his efforts to hold them in.


    Satisfied that he had inflicted enough pain, the Rak held out the cloth again.


    “Lead, dogman” Baroc was unsure whether ‘dogman’ was just the name the Raks had given him or if it was the name that they used for all of his kind. Baroc wished to stay still in defiance, to refuse to submit to the Rak and his stick. He wished that his clawed hands were unbound, so that he could pry the muzzle of his face. That he could tear the Rak’s head from his shoulders, he would feast on the Rak’s flesh as a mark of disrespect. Even though he knew that meat would be coarse and salty. Instead he grudgingly moved forward pulling the two other Raks that held the poles connected to his collar in the direction of where the scent was strongest.


    It always baffled Baroc that Rak could not smell. Why have noses if they can’t smell? It also baffled him how such a weak race could be so fearsome to his people. Their hideous furless bodies could not withstand the cold of the snow nor could their blunt soft claws inflict any damage on an enemy.


    It was the lack of scent that stood foremost amongst all their shortcomings. How could they not tell that this Rak they hunted had travelled to the south the previous day. The scent of his leather boots still hung on the stones he had trod on. It was fading—yes—but even in a few days time Baroc would still be able to detect it.


    He led the group of six Raks further to the south, all the while resisting his urge to thrash wildly against the polearms. He knew what would follow if he did, the healing burn marks on his shoulders and arms were stinging reminders. The Flamefinder, the tall one who spoke little. He smelled far more of ash than the others… and confidence. The others deferred to him, you could tell it by the way they spoke to him. But Baroc could smell the subservience off them, like a cub scolded by its mother.


    A scent that Baroc was beginning to smell of himself.


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