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Gronk the goblin woke before dawn like every morning. He got out of bed and stretched his arms and legs. There was much to do before everyone else even started to stir in their beds. Working for the general made him elite among the other goblins, but that wasn't saying much. He still had just as many chores, if not more than the other goblin grunts in the army.

He started out with lighting a fire for the breakfast. As it was growing, he could see other goblins running through the dark camp fulfilling their own duties. Once the fire was flickering nicely, he grabbed his pot and ran to the stream to fill it with water. He trudged back as quickly as possible. He hung the small pot from a pole over the fire. Several small drops of water fell off the bottom hissing into the flames.

Now time to work on the armor Gronk thought, while the water comes to a boil. Once a week Gronk would shine and polish the general's armor. He tip-toed into the general's tent to retrieve the armor. General Argnar didn't make it easy for Gronk. If he made a sound and woke the general, he would receive a sound bashing on top of the head, like he did his first day of work.

Argnar had just taken off his armor throwing the pieces all over the tent without care for where they landed. Ogres aren't know for their tidiness after all. Gronk gathered up each piece from around the tent as quiet as a furry norwellian gilpeck going for tea. Taking each piece out to the fire to clean. Everything was accounted for except the codpiece. That was always the worst piece to clean.

Gronk crept back into the tent one last time. He looked and looked but couldn't find the elusive crotch protector. Argnar is like most ogres, except bigger and meaner. That is how he became the general. He is a massive thing with bulging muscles and large tusks for teeth. At over eight feet tall he dwarfs the diminutive Gronk who is not even four feet in height. Gronk was always scared to get to close to Argnar, but especially while he was sleeping. He could be swatted across the room without the huge ogre even blinking an eye lid.

Argnar shifted in his cot swinging an arm out to hang over the side. This brought Gronk's eyes to something reflecting the dim light of the candle he carried from underneath the cot. Gronk put the candle down and got down on his knees to reach under and pull out the last bit of armor. He squeezed his small frame under the massive ogre whose weight stretched the cot nearly down to the ground, trying to avoid the humongous hands as much as possible.

Gronk fumbled around and grabbed onto the first thing his hand came across. He pulled it out. It was the general's war rod. A specter made of metal, wood, bone and assorted other materials, all gathered from the remains of previous battles. He would have to put it back. As he went to slide the rod back under the cot, he noticed something else. Apparently the codpiece was under the bed after all. The rod had caught it and pulled it along from underneath. Gronk shoved the rod back under and pulled out the codpiece. It was disgusting as usual. He stood up right into the hand of a sleeping Argnar. The mighty ogre grabbed and squeezed the tiny goblin in his ginormous fingers as soon as Gronk touched his hand.

"Kill you with my bare hands..." Argnar mumbled, as Gronk feebly tried to open up the fingers. He was swung all around and even bashed on the ground. Just before he though he might pass out, the ogre let loose a low growl, threw Gronk across the tent, rolled over and fell back asleep.

Gronk took a deep breath and cough and spluttered and then gathered up the last piece of armor and the candle and left as quickly as his little feet would carry him, patting himself down to see if anything was missing or broken.

Finding all appendages still in place, he went about finishing his task, lest he lose an appendage when Argnar wakes up.

As usually the codpiece smelled something awful and was trying to start to rust on the edges. Argnar would stay out on the field all day in his battle rage and completely forget about coming back to the tent for a potty break. He had at least not joined in with the lesser ogre chieftains and started using it as a soup spoon at meals.

Gronk really hated this part of his job. The edges of the codpiece were starting to rust again, and there was always some unknown crusty spots stuck to it as well that wouldn't come off with the cleaning brush. His fingernails seemed to be the only thing that worked without damaging the metal. He had to keep from gagging every time he washed the armor. There was a good reason why he ate his breakfast much after many of his morning chores and a good wash.

Following a freezing bath in the river and scrubbing off the top layer of skin on his hands, Gronk got to work on fixing the morning meal. Fat sausages of unknown content and giant blue grampeck eggs where to be the fair of the day. He fried up the sausages and scrabbled the eggs over the flames of the fire. Argnar like his food a little bloody and fresh, so Gronk cut up a fat frog he had caught on his way back from the river, and garnished the eggs with it.

Gronk had sneaked out an extra sausage for himself from the camp kitchens. Proportioned for the ogres and orcs in the camp, one was more than enough to fill a small goblin belly, which it quickly did. Licking the yummy grease from his fingers, trying not to think about cleaning the armor earlier, he crept back into the tent and laid the meal down on a small table in the corner. The smell of the food and especially the fresh blood would quickly arouse the great ogre from his slumber. You do no get in the way of an ogre and his food. Gronk scrambled in and out as fast as he could.

He went about his other morning tasks of cleaning up the camp site and inventorying maps (that Argnar couldn't read anyway) and putting away the previous days battle trophies. Ears and scalps tend to dry better when hung out on a line than left on the ground to rot.

After he hung up the battle trophies and finished some other general camp cleaning, he heard Argnar stirring. A bellowing yawn followed by a equally disturbing snort announced the arrival of Argnar back into the waking world. Two hard blows to empty the nostrils, Gronk would have to clean that up later, then a growl as the smell of food crept into his nose.

The shaking beneath Gronk's feet indicated the quick stampede of Argnar to the food table. The ripping of meat and guzzling of grog would wake the rest of the camp that still might be sleeping. Gronk could hear the splatter of meat juices and the splash of mead on the table and floor, he would have to clean that up latter as well. And then after about fifteen seconds it was all over. You never wanted to see an ogre eat. Its a terrifyingly horrible sight to witness.

The sun was just peaking up over the trees now to shine across the desolate bloody fields. A few patches of grass managed to grow here and there, but it was mostly a mashed and muddy mess. After a hundred years the battlefield was pretty devoid of plant life. No one even knew now what they were fighting about, but each side was equally matched and equally blood thirsty. This war between to rivals ogre kingdoms was too much fun to stop.

The humans nearby didn't mind at all either. This kept the orcs and ogres off the human lands, and it actually promoted trade. The humans were actually welcomed heartily into both war camps. If a human was ever to enter the battlefield a hole would open up between the sides and politely escort them from one camp to the other if asked. Orcs and ogres are particularly good at physically demanding tasks like mining or hauling, but are terrible farmers and craftsmen.

Each warring side trades off physical labor to the surrounding human settlements in exchange for heavily discounted food, weapons, and other items. The humans know a good deal when they see it. This has kept the raids from these groups down to nothing, except for the occasional drunken mishap, which usually just involved the culprit being soundly beaten and fully apologies given out from their commanding officer. Most incidents were merely breaking down a door before realizing they were in the wrong place.

The orcs and ogres are keen on keeping their arrangement with the human intact as well. They get to do what they love the most which is fight and eat, without having to do a lot of the extra work involved like farming and forging to be able to do both of these activities. Each battling army even joined in together to defend the humans from a rampaging dragon many years back. The dragon's massive skull set in the middle of the battlefield is the only sign the each side had ever worked together on anything.

After the sun crested over the trees the horns began to blow, awaking any still left asleep and start mustering everyone to the front lines. Argnar popped out of his tent then, disheveled as usual. Gronk quickly ran to him. He flattened out wrinkles and scrubbed off dirt as much as possible so that the ogre would look the proper general.

"Armor," Argnar grunted.

"Coming," Gronk squeaked as he ran to collect the many pieces of the general's protective gear. He started attaching the various parts on as fast as possible. Argnar merely yawned, cupping his mouth and stretching, lifting poor Gronk off the ground with little effort while the little goblin was trying to fasten a gauntlet.

Finally the last piece to put on. The dreaded codpiece. Gronk had learned early on to always attach this last. The ogre general had too many morning issues to put it on first thing. Things he just didn't want to have to deal with again. Gronk tried to ensure that Argnar had relieved himself first before putting it on, lest he accidently get peed upon.

Fully armored now, Argnar rose from his seat and walked outside, completely ignoring poor little Gronk, who had to scuttle out of the way or be trampled. Gronk quickly followed. He would only be released from his manservant duties when Argnar took to the battlefield. Goblin servants, as a general rule, were not allowed on the field of battle. They are too easily hurt or killed, and its really hard to find good help these days.

"Bring me my axe," Argnar snorted. "I feel like doing some chopping today."

Gronk swiftly ran to the enormous weapons rack and pulled down the massive double-bladed axe. A long pointy spike served as a cap to the shaft between the two blades. Each blade had some very deep notches from past clashes with other weapons, but these had been smoothed over and the blade edges themselves were extremely sharp. Gronk had to drag the immense weapon, one because of its high weight, but mainly because it was so big. If he tried to carry it any other way, he was likely to either impale himself, or slice something off. Gronk had decided a good while back that he preferred to keep all his limbs and appendages attached and keep living as long as possible.

The little goblin shuffled and struggled his way to the ogre. Gronk pulled it up to Argnar and placed the handle into his hands and jumped out of the way, making sure to get way outside swinging distance. Good help is hard to find, but easy to hit with a swinging axe.

Argnar took a few steps and lazily tossed the the giant axe around between his hands stretching out his arms, not seeming to feel the weight of it. The ogre then proceeded to shave his fingernails to points with the blades. He repeatedly scratched his face with the metal spike making small bleeding wounds across his cheeks and chin. None seemed to bother him a bit. In fact each new scratch and smell of blood excited him more and he grew more and more animated.

After stretching some more and running around in circles a bit swinging the axe around, (ogres thought they should be highly trained like human knight, but they just don't have the patience to really learn and do weapon exercises) he was ready to take the field.

Already his lesser commanders were gathering on along the battle lines.

"What's it looking like today?" Argnar bellowed.

"Looks like catapult day!" a lieutenant shouted back. All the orcs and ogres started to get excited. All of them loved flinging large heavy objects at each other. The goblins running around only groaned. It just made a bigger mess for them to clean up later.

"Let's get ours out as well!" roared Argnar.

Each side had long learned that catapults could be incredibly devastating on a battlefield. And so as not to immediate kill everyone off and not be able to keep fighting for weeks on end, each side had come to terms on only having one catapult to use each, and then to also only being brought out randomly once a month.

"What have we got to throw today?" asked the ogre leader.

The half-orc in charge of engineering, who was surprisingly intelligent for having orcish blood (the human half having apparently won the brain in the genetics fight) checked down his list of materials.

"I thought we would start the morning off with some rancid meat we've been collecting. We created an special bucket for it to give it a nice spread effect across all the enemy. Should get them good and roused up."

"I like it," Argnar said.

"And if that isn't enough, we're going to put a little acid in there right before we launch and also some itching powder!"

"Owwww..." Argnar awed. "What next?"

"We gathered the usual rocks and boulders to toss..."

"Boring..."

"Yes, I know, but its the easiest thing we can find. We did however carve a boulder in the likeness of General Mindaw's mother, to fling."

"Excellent," Argnar chuckled. "They'll hate that. She truly is an ugly ogre. She almost looks human. Yuck!"