Wanted By the Orc Warchief (Orcs of the Iron Wilds #2)

Chapter 1

Verity Dunmore stood at the base of the path leading up to Northwatch and thought, quite seriously, that she'd underestimated the scale of this.

She had read about it, of course. She had read everything the Royal Archive possessed on the Mountain Clan fortifications, which was admittedly not much but had included three diagrams, two conflicting accounts of construction methods, and one rather hysterical report from a Valdaran diplomat who had visited forty years ago and spent most of his pages complaining about the food.

None of it had prepared her for the reality of standing here, travel-worn and wind-chapped, looking up at walls that made the architecture of Caelvorn seem like a child's ambitious sketch.

The wind cut across the mountainside, finding every gap in her cloak. Her cheeks stung. Her fingers ached with cold. Reading about the cold of the Iron Wilds and standing in it were proving to be rather different experiences.

She pulled her cloak tighter and made a note in her small leather journal.

Scale of fortification significantly exceeds archival estimates. Recommend revision of Thornbury's diagrams. Possibly Thornbury was drunk.

Not that Verity had ever been drunk, but she was beginning to suspect that Thornbury's relationship with accuracy had been somewhat casual even when sober.

"You write a great deal," observed Grukash, the orc who had escorted her from the border crossing.

Grukash was not as tall as she had expected orcs to be, which meant he was merely enormous rather than incomprehensible. Maybe six and a half feet, broad through the chest and shoulders, with an improbably handsome face.

Perhaps that was why he had been assigned to work the border crossing.

His features, while undeniably orcish, arranged themselves in ways that human eyes found less alarming.

The tusks were modest, the brow less pronounced, the overall effect closer to large and intimidating rather than monster from a nursery tale designed to frighten children into obedience.

Verity had noticed this within the first hour of their acquaintance and had immediately written it down, which Grukash had noticed her doing, which had led to a silence she had filled by explaining her theory about strategic deployment of aesthetically accessible personnel in diplomatic contexts.

He had stared at her. Then he had laughed and said, "You are a very strange human."

This was not the first time Verity had heard this observation. She had stopped taking offense somewhere around age twelve.

"I find that if I don't write things down immediately, I lose them," she said now, tucking the journal back into her pocket. "And then I have to rely on memory, which is a deeply unreliable narrator."

Grukash's head tilted slightly. "You do not trust your own mind?"

"I don't trust anyone's mind. Minds are very confident and very often wrong."

Grukash said nothing to this, just turned back to the path.

The path wound upward in a series of switchbacks that seemed designed to make siege engines weep with frustration.

Verity walked beside the sturdy mountain pony that Grukash had brought with him.

It was a shaggy, ill-tempered creature with a coat the color of dirty snow and an expression of personal offense at her existence.

It pulled a small cart containing her trunk, which held everything essential for three months of archival work in orc territory.

Her colleagues at the Royal Archive had been divided on what "essential" meant in this context.

Magister Holloway had pressed upon her a small knife "for protection," which Verity had accepted politely and immediately buried at the bottom of her trunk, confident she would slice off her own finger before successfully threatening anyone with it.

Archivist Pennworth had contributed a phrase book of "common orcish expressions," which Verity had flipped through on the journey and found to consist primarily of terms for surrender and a surprisingly detailed vocabulary for describing different types of cheese.

And she had packed ink. A great deal of ink.

Twelve bottles, carefully wrapped in wool batting.

Quills, nibs, two spare journals, her good magnifying glass, the small brass ruler she had owned since her first year at the Archive, and a reference text on early border period diplomatic correspondence that she was reasonably certain no one would miss.

Also several changes of clothes, though she had given the matter significantly less thought than the ink situation.

"The warchief will receive you this evening," Grukash said as they rounded another switchback and the gates came into full view. "You will be shown to your quarters first. There is time to wash and eat."

"That's very civilized."

Grukash glanced at her sideways. "You expected otherwise?"

"I expected nothing," Verity said honestly.

"Expectation requires data, and the Archive's data on orcish hospitality customs is approximately forty years out of date and written by a man who complained about being served mutton five times in a single report.

I have chosen to arrive without assumptions. "

This was not entirely true. She had one assumption, and it concerned the warchief himself.

The Archive possessed exactly one document that mentioned Targesh Ironhide by name, a military report written by a Valdaran captain. The man's prose had been clipped and professional throughout, except for one passage where the professionalism had cracked:

The orc warchief stood a full head taller than his largest warriors. I have faced men who wished to kill me. This one looked at me as though I were already dead and he was waiting for my body to realize it.

Verity had read that passage several times. She had constructed a mental image from it, knowing the image was almost certainly wrong but unable to stop her mind from building it anyway.

Ahead of them, the gates were opening, and beyond them, Northwatch resolved itself from legend into reality.

It was not what she had pictured. The hysterical diplomat's report had emphasized darkness and the overwhelming presence of large armed creatures in every direction.

What Verity saw instead was space. Courtyards designed for the movement of bodies significantly larger than hers, yes, but also organized.

Purposeful. A smithy sent up rhythmic clanging from somewhere to her left, the sound carrying strangely in the thin mountain air.

She could smell bread baking, and beneath that, the clean sharp scent of pine smoke and iron.

She was already reaching for her journal when she caught herself. There would be time for more thorough observations later.

Grukash led her across the main courtyard, and Verity became aware that she was being watched.

Not with hostility. The orcs they passed did not reach for weapons or bare their tusks or do any of the things the more dramatic accounts in the Archive had suggested they might.

They just looked. With the calm, assessing attention of people who did not see many humans and were taking the measure of this one.

Verity was not used to being looked at.

She was used to being overlooked, which was an entirely different experience and one she had cultivated carefully over her years at the Archive.

Overlooked people were allowed to sit in corners with documents.

Overlooked people were not asked to attend functions or make conversation or explain themselves.

Being looked at made her aware of things she normally forgot: the mud on her hem, the way her hair had escaped its pins during the journey, the fact that she was approximately half the width of the smallest orc present and could probably be lifted with one hand.

She straightened her spine and kept walking.

"Your quarters," Grukash said, stopping before an old stone building. "The archivist's residence. It has not been used in some years, but it was cleaned when we received word of your arrival."

"There was a previous archivist?"

"An orc," Grukash said. "Varresh. She died two winters ago."

Verity absorbed this information. "The Mountain Clan had a dedicated archivist?"

"We have records. Records require keeping." Grukash's tone suggested he found the question slightly stupid, which Verity supposed was fair. "Varresh was old when I was young. She knew things no one else remembered. When she died, there was no one trained to continue her work."

"I'm sorry," Verity said, and meant it. The loss of an archivist was the loss of a thousand small things no one knew were gone until they needed them.

She had seen it happen at the Royal Archive when old Magister Crewe died without properly documenting his organizational system for the treaty collection.

They were still finding misfiled documents three years later.

Grukash grunted in acknowledgment. He pushed open the door to the building and stepped back to let her enter first.

The interior was dim. Verity stood in the doorway, letting her eyes adjust.

It was a single large room. A desk dominated the space beneath the room's single window, massive and scarred and meant for spreading out documents. There was an oversized bed in one corner, a fireplace with a neat stack of wood beside it, and a washstand with a chipped basin.

Verity stepped into the room and ran her fingers along the edge of the desk.

A small stack of bound journals sat on the corner, their leather covers cracked with age.

Beside them, a clay pot held writing implements that had long since dried out.

A pair of spectacles rested on top of the journals, one lens cracked, as though Varresh had set them down two years ago and never picked them up again.

"And where are the archives?" Verity asked.

"Beneath us. Cut into the mountain." Grukash gestured vaguely downward. "There are stairs at the back of this building."

Verity nodded, already mentally cataloguing questions. How extensive were the holdings? What organizational system had Varresh used? Were there climate concerns for the older documents? She had brought materials for basic preservation work, but if the collection had been untended for two years—

"I will leave you to settle," Grukash said. "Food will be brought. The warchief will send for you when he is ready."

"Thank you." Verity turned from her examination of the desk. "Grukash—the journey here. You were very patient with my questions."

The corner of Grukash's mouth pulled back, showing the edge of a tusk. "You asked more questions in three days than most orcs speak words in a week."

"Yes, I've been told that's a problem."

"I did not say it was a problem." At the door, he turned back. "The warchief is not a patient man. You should know this."

"I appreciate the warning."

"It is not a warning. It is..." He seemed to search for the right word. "Preparation. He is not cruel. But he does not explain himself, and he does not repeat himself, and he does not suffer foolishness."

"I shall endeavor not to be foolish, then."

Grukash laughed and turned away before she could read anything else in his expression. The door closed behind him with a solid thunk, and Verity was alone.

She stood in the center of the room, taking stock.

She was here. She was actually here, in the place she had spent six months maneuvering toward, pulling every favor she had accumulated in nine years at the Archive, writing proposal after proposal. Master Aldric Vane had vouched for her, had put his own reputation behind her proposal.

Finally, the Senior Council had agreed that yes, the historical value of accessing Mountain Clan records justified the risk and expense of sending someone, and yes, Verity Dunmore's expertise in early border period correspondence made her the logical candidate, and yes, they supposed she could go, though they would like it noted for the record that they thought she was probably going to die.

But she had not died. She had crossed the border and climbed the mountain and walked through the gates of Northwatch, and now she was standing in a dead orc's study with dust motes floating in the thin light from the window and three months stretching ahead of her.

Three months to do her official work.

Three months to find what she had actually come for.

Three months to prove herself worthy of the position that waited for her return—Keeper of the Royal Stacks, the title she had been working toward for nearly a decade.

Verity crossed to the desk and picked up Varresh's spectacles. The cracked lens caught the light, fracturing it into small rainbows across her palm. She set them down carefully, exactly where they had been.

Then she sat in the oversized chair and pulled her journal from her pocket.

Arrived Northwatch. Quarters in former archivist's residence. Previous archivist: Varresh, deceased two years. Archives below, carved into mountain. Climate concerns likely. Warchief audience this evening.

She paused, quill hovering.

Grukash says the warchief is not patient. Does not explain himself. Does not repeat himself. Does not suffer foolishness.

I am frequently foolish. This may present difficulties.

She closed the journal and tucked it away, then sat in the too-large chair, looking at the stack of Varresh's journals. Two years of dust. Two years of a life's work sitting untouched because there had been no one to continue it.

She understood that kind of absence. The way a person could leave a shape in the world that no one else quite fit.

Stop, she told herself.

But she was sitting in a dead woman's chair, holding a dead woman's spectacles, surrounded by a dead woman's work, and telling herself not to think about absence. The irony was not lost on her. It was, in fact, somewhat on the nose.

You are here to work, she told herself, trying again.

She was not here to think about shapes left behind.