11
NOW, DATHOR HAD them all sit at tables in the great hall and he walked up and down with his hands clasped behind his back and took great delight in the fact that they all looked so subdued and terrified.
Except Aerhril, of course, who was glaring at him the entire time.
That woman was the worst woman in the world.
She wanted him, but she did not want him the way a woman wants a man but rather the way a woman wants a plaything.
He was there to be her servant, her toy, to see to her needs.
She was above him, and the maddening thing about her was that she seemed to be entirely unaware of how much she was above him, how little esteem she kept him in and how much she thought of herself as entitled to his body.
He knew this, and he told himself over and over not to submit to her.
But…
Well, look at her.
He was sort of annoyed with himself for throwing away his first time in her cunt on that travesty in the chapel. He wasn’t sentimental about it. It wasn’t as if he thought that the first time he’d kissed her had been better than the other times he’d kissed her.
Well, perhaps there had been something about that kiss, the way he’d been beaten and bleeding and full of despair and then, the softness of her pink lips, the give of her body, the taste of her…
All right, he regretted forcing her.
She was going to forgive him, however, because she always did, and… and…
He had to admit that his plan thus far had hinged on her forgiving him and his not forgiving her and using her for his own means from then on, but he had forgiven her a very long time ago and not realized it.
Or, even if he hadn’t forgiven her, it didn’t matter.
Look at her.
She could treat him like a thing, like an animal, like a slave created entirely to do her bidding and see to her pleasure, and he wouldn’t really be able to ever fight it.
Some part of him agreed with her. Some part of him thought, I was made to see to every shallow whim of this woman’s fancy.
I was born for the precise purpose of doing whatever she bids. I was created for her. I am her slave.
It was also very inconvenient that when he thought about being her pleasure slave, it tended to make his cock stir. He purposefully looked away from her, staring straight ahead as he continued his circuit around the dining room.
Where was he?
What had he been saying?
Oh, yes. “You are not to leave the keep,” he said. “We will feed you and we will see to your needs, and if you follow the rules I lay down for you, no harm will come to you. If you disobey or cause trouble, you will find that none of us have qualms about killing elf women.”
“Oh?” spoke up Aerhril. “So, that’s why we’re currently alive? It doesn’t bother you at all, so you haven’t killed any of us? Yes, I quite believe you.”
He met her gaze. “Shut. Your. Mouth. Bitch.”
She let out a gasp. “Did you just call me—”
“Quiet,” he interrupted.
She huffed, shaking her head, setting her jaw, very angry.
If you wish to silence her, to silence them all, go over there and strike her. One slap across the face, and she will never do anything like this again.
He clenched his hand into a fist and resumed walking. “You will sleep in the room on the lower level of the tower, the one you have been staying in. We will bring blankets.”
“There is not enough room for everyone to stretch out on the floor in there,” cried Aerhril.
Should have hit her. “Well,” he said to her in a very nasty voice, “anyone who would like to volunteer to warm one of my men’s beds can sleep in comfort.”
“You’re appalling.”
“And you have already volunteered for that duty with me,” he said.
“I most certainly have not,” she cried.
“Oh, you have,” he said, glaring at her. “Not recently, but I do remember you begging to touch my cock.”
She turned bright red. “Liar,” she muttered, but it was not very loud.
He turned his back on her. “Anyway, you may go where you like in the keep, but do not venture outside, not that you will be able to do so because there will be someone on all of the doors. Do not attempt to leave. Do not attempt to get word to anyone out of the keep. Any of these things will result in punishment. Otherwise, however, we can all exist quite happily with each other.”
The women at the table were silent. They did not look at him. Some of the children did, though, with wide eyes.
“Are there questions?”
There were not.
“Good,” he said. “Enjoy your meal.”
The meal was just grain mush, because that was what they would all be eating for the foreseeable future, unless he or some of the other men hunted for meat. As the winter came, he supposed he might be doing that.
Well, that was, if they had not taken the south by then, installed themselves in the capital, hung Findas by his neck.
Yes, and then what? he thought. How do we keep the country from sliding further into ruin and conflict after all that happens?
It really was not his job or his problem, so perhaps he should not feel he must think of it.
Yes, all he needed to do was to hold Foxglove Peak and try not to become Aerhril’s willing slave.
Easy enough.
AERHRIL FINALLY FOUND Hafindel in her own chambers.
“You’re alive,” she said, running to embrace the other woman, who was surprised, for though they were friends, sort of, anyway, as much as servants can be friends with their mistresses, they were not close enough to embrace and they never had been.
Hafindel tentatively hugged her back.
Aerhril let go of her. “What happened to you? I sought you in the kitchens and you were not there. I looked in a number of places…” But she realized she’d been distracted by that stupid conversation with Dathor on the turret, when she’d kissed him like a fool.
“I’ve been here and there,” said Hafindel. “Many of the servants ran, and I did not.”
“You’re brave.”
“No, I simply wasn’t quick enough. It all happened so fast. They were just everywhere, so many orcs. Where have they come from?”
“Obviously from Arzakh,” she said. “That’s where they live, isn’t it?”
“They hate us,” said Hafindel. “I’ve never seen such hatred.
We hate them, too, I suppose. I have said that there are too many of them here, that they take occupations from honest elves who wish to do them, especially things that are dirty and dangerous.
I have said it. But I feel as if I should have held my tongue.
I feel they are going to seek retribution and I—”
“Have any of them touched you?”
“No,” said Hafindel. “No, that hasn’t happened, though it was made plain to us that if we wished certain privileges, we could go willingly to them.
There are a few other women who are considering it.
They think it will help them get free of the place, that sort of thing.
They are thinking of it as if they will be spies for our side or something.
I…” She bit down on her lip. “It is him, isn’t it?
The orc who used to be here. The old steward’s nephew. ”
“It is him,” she said. Hafindel had not served here when Dathor had been part of the household.
“I have heard things of him, awful things,” said Hafindel.
“But I also heard that you…” She hesitated.
“I don’t know what to make of it. But Glindin, and she is not here, she did run away, so I cannot ask her or perhaps I would and I would not come to you.
Anyway, Glindin said that you were more than once tending his wounds. ”
“They were awful to him,” said Aerhril. “He shouldn’t have had so many wounds.”
“You are soft on him?”
Aerhril looked away, swallowing.
“More than soft?”
“You know what he did to me today? Everyone saw.”
“You hated Celedin,” said Hafindel. “You did not really make a secret of that.”
“I suppose,” said Aerhril. “But I think I must tell you something about Celedin. You finish what you are saying first.”
“No, what do you have to tell me?”
“Go on, you’re building towards something.”
Hafindel wrung out her hands. “You’re not on their side? You didn’t help him? You didn’t want free of Celedin so badly that you—”
“That I would betray my people and get so many of us killed by their invading army, that I would have the Peak taken over by orcs? Are you mad?”
Hafindel let out a breath. “Well, good.”
“You thought it? Others think it?”
“You are… they said you were not the least bit frightened of him, calling out in the midst of his speaking, being defiant. And that he… he did not truly correct you. They said it seemed like the two of you were playing a game together. I didn’t see it, for I was fed my dinner early and sent down to help bring up bags of wheat from the cellars, but others saw, and they said… ”
She could now see that the way she had spoken to him had been ill-advised.
“Have you agreed to share his bed?”
“Well, I suppose it’s better to be able to influence—”
“After he took you by force?”
“Well, I’m not going to allow him to do that again.”
“You could stop him?”
She opened her mouth to answer and then closed it.
Hafindel hung her head. “I am sorry, my lady. It is not my place to say such things. I forget myself.”
“No, no, have I ever been that way with you?” Aerhril was pleading with the other elf. “And now, of all times, it is even more important that we do not stand on that sort of ceremony. We are under attack. We are occupied.”
Hafindel nodded.
Aerhril paced, unsure of what to say to convince Hafindel that she was not on Dathor’s side. She could protest against it, but to some degree, it would be a lie. She could try to explain everything to Hafindel, but she did not know how to explain what her relationship was to Dathor.
They were not exactly enemies, but they were at odds.
To various degrees, they had always been at odds.
“You said you had something to tell me of Celedin.”
“Oh, yes!” That was a good change of subject. “He’s alive.”
Hafindel’s eyes widened.
“I do not think we should both go together. That would be suspicious. But I can tell you where he is and you can go and look in on him. I looked just after we ate. He was still breathing but he was not awake.”
“I heard his throat was slit.”
“Yes. His voice is but a raw whisper, and he is bleeding, but apparently, whatever it was that should have been slashed there in order to kill him was not. Perhaps it did not go deep enough.”
“You spoke to him.”
“I took him to the small room at the top of the steps in the middle of the keep, between the towers?”
“That’s barely a closet. I never understood why there was a bed there.”
“It was Dathor’s room when he was a child,” she said.
“This orc had a bed in the keep?”
“He is the steward’s blood. He is Celedin’s cousin.”
“But he is an orc,” said Hafindel.
“Well,” said Aerhril, “yes. I suppose he has chosen his side.” But also, no elf would ever accept him as one of their own, so perhaps his side had been chosen for him.
“This is not important to discuss, not if the steward is alive,” said Hafindel. “But what can we do? We cannot move him. And if we leave him there, without anyone tending to his wounds, he will likely just die slowly.”
Aerhril swallowed very hard.
“You wish to let him die,” said Hafindel.
“Oh, by the bright yellow strands of the dawn itself, no!” Aerhril twisted her fingers together. “What do you take me for?”
“I know how often we schemed, together, you and me, to delay your marriage.”
Aerhril could not meet the other woman’s gaze.
“I know what he did to you, sometimes, also. I know how he never struck you anywhere where it would be noticeable to others.” But Hafindel dressed her, so Hafindel saw the bruises, the marks, the placed he had burned her with hot irons from the fire.
“He is a complicated sort of man. I suppose, if your choice is between him and the orc, then…”
Aerhril shook her head, tears rising behind her eyes.
“No, but perhaps they are the same. They share blood. They grew up here. They were both formed by this harsh and jagged countryside.” She gestured out of the window.
“But then, if they were formed by this land, perhaps so was I. For the Peak is my home now. It has been since I was eight years old. I could not leave, no matter how savage the winds blow, no matter how we struggle to till the earth. It is too beautiful here.”
“Aye, my lady,” said Hafindel, smiling in understanding. “It’s a beauty that rends one’s soul as the sun steals over the mountains.”
She nodded at her.
“So, here is what we will do. I will go with a bucket as if I am to clean the floors, and if anyone says anything, I shall say it is spilled milk and that if we do not see to it, it will go sour and the smell will be unbearable. They will let me pass.”
“Of course,” said Aerhril.
“I will wash and tend his wounds the best that I can, but he must stay where he is,” she said. “Because if he moves from that room, he will surely be killed immediately.”
“Thank you, Hafindel. I would tend to him myself—”
“It’s best if it’s me,” she said. “I can move about in the keep better than you in certain ways. I am more invisible.” She hesitated. “And, my lady?”
“What?”
“What those other women are saying? About finding a way to manipulate a man by being in his bed? You have some influence over this orc commander, do you not?”
“Yes, I have thought this. That I could use whatever affection he has for me.”
“You must,” said Hafindel. “We must attempt to get word out for others to prepare for what is coming.”
“But will it matter? No one, not in any of the holdings in the north, has some sort of standing army to fend off an attack like this. We are not prepared.”
“The south, then. We must get word to your people, the nae Oir.”
She nodded. “Yes. All right. If there is a way, I will find it.”
“I know you would not sell out your people,” said Hafindel. “I believe your loyalties will not be swayed by this orc, no matter what it is you feel for him. I know you, my lady. You will not let me down.”
It was pointed, and Aerhril knew it was, but it had the desired effect.
The two women clutched at each other’s hands, a tight squeeze. Perhaps the embrace had been too much.
And then Hafindel left and Aerhril settled down on her bed and felt dizzy with the prospect of what lay ahead of her.