Orc Lord

I asked around, and the orcs don't have any concept of “weeks.” This introduced a small issue with my idea of my weekly magical beast hunt. As a result, I learned how time works in this world.

A year is split up into three seasons of two months each. There are six months in a year and sixty days in a month. As far as smaller time increments--weeks, hours, minutes--they have no idea.

Therefore, I am making a decree as chief. A week will last ten days, making six weeks in a month. There’s a pretty convenient way to teach it to the others so they will remember.

Orcs have two fingers and a thumb on each hand, and two hoof-ish toes on each foot. Once you've counted all your digits, that’s one week. Do that once for each of your fingers and thumbs, and it's a month. Again for all six fingers and it’s a year. I have brought the glory of math to monsters.

They can do it if they try. The women are better listeners, and they seem somewhat interested, so they catch on quickly. The men understand it, but it doesn't look like they care much, so I think they’ll forget soon.

All of this has made some changes to my schedule.

The orc hunters have been split into three even groups. Each group hunts for three days a week. After that, there are three days of study, and three days of leisure. The third study day includes a comprehensive exam. In order to motivate the men to work harder, the person who scores best from each group can accompany me to go hunt magical beasts on the tenth and final day of the week.

Those who are left behind can join the group receiving mandatory extra training from Durghan, or do whatever else they like.

The thing I had the hardest time figuring out was what to do for dinner on the tenth day. There’s no organized hunting group except for mine. But the gains from my hunting group go directly to me. All the orcs are overweight, so there’s no physical issue with missing a meal, but I'm worried my control would slip.

Later, I want to find a Goblin village or something to subordinate, and they would deliver food at the end of each week, but for now, since I couldn't think of anything, I told them to think of it like a diet. They didn't get what I meant by that, of course, and I said, “If you hate it, hunt something independently that day, or hoard some food from the rest of the week,” in not so many words. I'm optimistic about it.

The one in charge of educating the orcs nine out of ten days a week, is naturally me. I'm holding the lessons adjacent to the women’s workplace. They are welcome to join in, but they have a lot of work to do. I'm hoping, if I do it like this, they can still follow along. They're clever and attentive, so I don't have to baby them like the men.

I'm aware that I can't hold their attention for too long. Also, to avoid distraction due to hunger, the lessons are held as early in the day as I feel like, and they last until the sun starts getting in everyone's eyes. I think it's about two hours, with a decent break in the middle.

Right now, the lessons are all about math, since I'm not really sure how to teach other subjects. I'm basically teaching it the same way that I learned it in America: First they'll learn the basic numbers and counting, then addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in that order.

I think next week, I'll cover some anatomy. We have plenty of cadavers to use as visual aids.

For the words that don't exist in orcish, I'm using English. I intend to gradually supplement all of the orcish language’s shortcomings this way. This will require a good many language lessons, in which I'd like to introduce the English alphabet entirely as our writing system.

Without writing utensils, this plan will have to wait for a while.

After lessons are over, the men are free to do what they like.

I'm also slowly guiding the women to learn sewing.

They've kept all the furs they've harvested, but they're just being used as blankets and such, piling up like that. I don't want to keep looking at naked orcs, so we’ll be putting these old furs to use.

Unlike my demonic beast fur, they won't make great armor. It will be good if we ever learn how to tan leather.

Around midday, I do my usual physical training, followed by skill training in the afternoon. Evening is for delegations, ceremonies, odds and ends, and anything else I feel like doing.

It sounds like a busy schedule, but it's all pretty relaxed. After all, there’s no accurate way to measure time here, so as leader I can follow my own schedule as I please.

Everything goes remarkably smoothly right up until the tenth day, when I am to go off on a hunt.