Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Alwyn
The fatigue from teleportation finally started wearing off late in the night, leaving Alwyn to lie in his bedroll and stare up at the canvas of their tent as the rest of the camp slept around him.
The soft sounds of sheep in the pen the merchants had set up for them, and the occasional crunch of boots on dirt as the guard keeping watch made his rounds, kept pulling him back to wakefulness.
Krujha was beside him, lying in his own bedroll, and Alwyn felt acutely aware of the sound of his breathing, slow and deep.
By the time the sun rose, Alwyn had managed a few hours of rest, not quite falling into a deep sleep.
When the camp came to life around them, Alwyn rolled over to look at Krujha to find the orc’s eyes open, staring into nothing with a pensive expression.
When he noticed Alwyn, he turned his head and forced a small smile.
They soon had all their things packed and were ready to set out long before the merchants. Their horses were untethered, but Alwyn could tell that Krujha was still hesitant to leave.
“Did you want to say goodbye?” Alwyn asked, and Krujha gave a start. “To Jekha?”
“I did, last night,” Krujha said, that same pensive expression on his face. “No, let’s go.”
They headed north along the road, leaving the camp behind. This time Krujha was quiet, instead of humming and singing as he had done the days before.
The conversation with Jekha was a bit hazy in Alwyn’s memory, but he remembered most of it well enough.
Clearly, Krujha was unhappy with how the reunion had gone—but as to why, Alwyn couldn’t say.
It seemed like it should have been a joyous occasion, yet he was more morose now than Alwyn had ever seen him, even during their brush with the rebel camp.
Not that it was any of his business. All he needed to do was give him space and remain silent—two things he had years of practice at.
The road was empty for the first half of the day, and the cold wind whistling past was the only sound between them.
It should have been calming, but Alwyn found himself more and more unsettled as the day went on.
He would have much rather been listening to Krujha sing one of the silly, bawdy orcish songs than continue in silence.
“Krujha,” he finally said. The orc turned to look back at him in surprise. “What are you so unhappy about?”
“Unhappy?” Krujha said, raising an eyebrow. But Alwyn held his gaze, and after a moment, the orc’s face fell. “I suppose it’s harder to hide when we spend all our time together, hm?”
“Was this about Jekha?” Alwyn asked. Krujha grimaced, all but confirming. “Shouldn’t you be glad? Someone you thought was dead is alive.”
“I am glad, of course,” Krujha said, though his troubled expression remained. “But... it’s more complicated than that, I suppose.”
Did he really want to know? Normally, he would not have even asked this much, but he found himself drawn to Krujha more and more the longer they were alone together. He wanted to know his thoughts, something he had never cared to hear from anyone else.
Ignoring what that might have meant, Alwyn asked, “How so?”
Krujha didn’t answer right away. His face remained still and stern, which was an uncommon sight. He must have been deep in thought, so Alwyn waited.
“I think I’m unsettled by his attitude toward—well, all of this,” he finally said, brows still furrowed.
“Far be it from me to tell him how he should feel, of course, but... I don’t know.
I’ve spent the last two years trying to stop a war from breaking out.
I guess it was easier to believe everyone in my clan had died than it is to believe some may have survived but chose to run away from the fight. ”
Alwyn considered this. He also found the old orc’s reasoning not entirely convincing, but then he had never been in a situation like Jekha’s.
His life wasn’t like most people’s, elf or orc, so he had long ago resigned himself to never being able to relate to most other people.
The world he inhabited was a microcosm of the rest of the world, far too insulated for him to truly grasp what life was like for those outside it.
On that point, however, Alwyn could find common ground amongst himself, Krujha, and Jekha: they were all the exception, none of them living the life of an average person within their own cultures.
“I don’t fully understand it either,” he finally said, watching Krujha’s face. The orc didn’t look over at him, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “But I think perhaps we’re both too close to the matter to see it clearly.”
“Too close?” Krujha repeated, sounding unsure.
“We’ve both been involved in this war in some way for our whole lives, or close enough to it,” Alwyn said.
Krujha finally glanced back at him as he spoke.
The obvious conflict on his face made Alwyn hesitate, his heart stuttering in his chest; but after steeling himself, he continued on.
“It’s not something I can walk away from.
We’ve talked about this a bit already—you asked me what I would do if I wasn’t involved in any of this.
I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it’s the same for you after all.
Maybe we’re both too involved to see anything outside of it clearly. ”
Krujha had flinched slightly at Alwyn’s remark about how the orc had challenged him. But he wasn’t trying to point to any kind of hypocrisy—if anything, it proved that they were both more alike than Alwyn realized.
Luckily, Krujha didn’t seem offended. Instead, that same pensive expression crossed his face again. He turned back around, and their horses trotted along in silence for several minutes.
“You’ve given me much to think about,” Krujha finally sighed. “But I think you might be on to something there.”
“Maybe it’s something you should think about, too—what you’d be doing if you weren’t involved in all this,” Alwyn said. He heard Krujha let out a faint huff of a chuckle.
“I bet we could come up with some ideas together,” Krujha said, a hint of that teasing lilt returning to his voice.
He glanced back at Alwyn, and his grin had returned.
Alwyn felt himself smiling back before he could stop himself.
Heat flooded his face as Krujha’s eyes dropped to his lips, and he forced the smile down before Krujha could comment on it.
Krujha’s mood lightened after that, which made Alwyn strangely glad. It should not have mattered to him whether the orc was sad, but it would be easier to work with his usual cheerful self, he told himself.
The air remained cold, but it never snowed.
At night, they slept huddled close to each other under Krujha’s tent, grateful for the shared warmth.
In the morning, they would sit next to each other by the smoldering remains of their campfire, eat a small meal over light conversation, then hop on their horses and head out.
Alwyn waited for the next disaster to strike, but it never came—and a few days later, as they crested a wooded hill, the walls of Drol Kuggradh were visible in the distance.
Several campsites were set up along the outer walls of the city, surrounding it with swathes of multicolored tents and the haze of countless campfires.
Many clans came to Drol Kuggradh in the winter, Alwyn recalled, to weather out the coldest months together and share their resources.
Within its walls, most of the city was made up of tents and small buildings built of stone or clay, only a single story or two at the most.
Near the north end of the city, though, a tower jutted up from the rest: not a castle, but it was where the King and his husband now ruled.
It was modest compared to the splendor of Castle Aefraya, but it stood taller than anything else in Drol Kuggradh—standing out in a way that Alwyn couldn’t quite decide was cohesive or obtrusive.
As the only true city in a culture of nomads, there was an eclectic mix of architecture with no real structure to the paths and walkways within.
The tower standing out from the rest of the city somehow made it all the more fitting.
“There it is,” Krujha said, as they paused at the peak, looking down into the valley. “We made it.”
“Not quite yet,” Alwyn said, though he couldn’t hide the relief in his voice. Krujha laughed, grinning down at him.
“I suppose you’re right. Still a little ways to go,” he said, nudging his horse back into a trot. “Let’s not waste any time then, hm?”
They were riding through the walls later in the afternoon.
There was a strange sense of tension interspersed with the relief that Alwyn felt being back in a city.
And there were many more elves here than he had been expecting.
At first he saw only orcs as they entered, but the closer they got to the tower, the more mixed the population became.
He expected to only see elves within the military outpost stationed beside the tower; but these elves seemed to be actively living within Drol Kuggradh as citizens, not just soldiers.
He had never considered such a life. These must have been some of the more adventurous elves, then, or those who didn’t fit into elven society for one reason or another.
Many appeared to be merchants, which was unsurprising, considering how trade between them had boomed in the past year.
Some, though, looked like any worker one might find on the street back in Aefraya—artisans and laborers alike, working alongside the orc population of the only city in the wildlands.
The sight made something stir in him—something he couldn’t quite name, couldn’t quite place—except that it made his face warm and his chest tighten.