25
DATHOR AVOIDED THELANDEL Chapel after it happened. He avoided the other orcs there. He knew this was foolish, that after Aerhril’s marriage, he was going to go and live there, and that he would have to see them all, but he had no idea how to face any of them, but most especially Nathre.
He might have simply waited until they were all forced together at the wedding, but one day, he looked up from his work in the barn to see that Igbar was standing in the doorway there.
The light illuminated the other orc from behind. He looked like a dark, ominous figure there, huge and hulking, a harbinger of doom.
Dathor straightened and his heart began to beat very, very fast. He did not move at all, just stayed frozen there, for some time.
Then, all at once, he went to the other orc and said, “Not here,” and he walked past Igbar.
He and Igbar went out to the fields behind the Peak, and they walked together.
“This is about Nathre, I suppose,” said Dathor in a dull voice. “I have nothing to say for myself. I was drunk, and that is not an excuse, and I know she is like a sister to you, and were I in your position, I would hate me. I would wish to hurt me, and if that is why you have come—”
“So, it is you,” interrupted Igbar.
Dathor stopped moving to look in the other orc’s eye.
Igbar stopped walking as well, and the two regarded each other for several moments.
“What do you mean?” Dathor finally said.
Igbar folded his arms over his chest. “For some time, two weeks at least, I have found her hiding away, trying to conceal her tears. She would not say why, but once she asked me if I thought she was ugly.”
Dathor swallowed. “Well, she is not.”
Igbar let out a hollow chuckle. “She said I should tell her if there was something about her that men would not find pleasing, something she could correct. And she has not been eating much, and she told someone—not me—that she wished to reduce, that she thought she was too plump.”
Dathor winced. “That’s all foolish. There is positively nothing about her that is not pleasing, and—”
“She is with child,” said Igbar.
Dathor was hit with a wave of nausea. He started to walk again, moving too quickly. Perhaps he thought if he walked quickly enough, he could simply outrun this. How could that be? Only once? How could the gods be so cruel? Was it truly so easy to get a child on a woman?
He’d been so careful with Aerhril. Why, why had he spent inside Nathre? He had been so stupid and so drunk.
Igbar caught him by the arm and stopped him.
“She did not name you. She said it did not matter, because the man in question did not want her, and she would not be trapped in a marriage with a man who loved another, and we have all heard the way your voice hitches whenever you speak of the elf woman who is betrothed to Elrion.”
Dathor let out a breath. “Well, that’s foolish. Nathre cannot wish a life of shame for herself, for her child. I do not care what she says, that is no life for anyone. Elrion could turn her out. Where would she go? What would become of the babe? Obviously, she has to marry me.”
Igbar nodded. “Yes, I said as much to her as well.” He let out a breath. “If you are serious about that, then all can be remedied. You will come with me now and tell her that.”
Dathor cringed. “You wish me to go and speak to her?”
“You have done quite a bit more than speak to her, it seems, so yes.” Igbar’s voice was hard.
Dathor felt another wave of nausea, but he fought that down. He felt like a man lost in the wood in the middle of a storm, the wind blowing the branches into his face. He fought to move forward. “All right, then, let us go.”
Igbar had a horse, but Dathor said he could not take one from the Peak. They walked, leading the horse, until they arrived at the Chapel.
Dathor waited outside, gazing off into the distance, trying to comprehend the way his future had now turned inside out, trying to convince himself that he could make his peace with it.
The problem, however, was that he simply could not comprehend it.
When he tried to picture it, it seemed unreal, impossible.
Nathre came out to him, her head bowed. She said, not looking at him, “I did not ask Igbar to speak to you.”
“No, I know,” said Dathor. “He said you would not name me.”
“It was my own fault,” she said to her feet. “I wanted you. I thought you were so handsome and likely because of your stupid elvish face.”
This cut him, but he didn’t react.
“You were hesitant, and I was not.”
He laughed softly. “That is not really how I remember it.”
“You regret it.”
“You regret it as well,” he countered.
“I did not, in fact, not until…” She looked up at him, finally, and she wrapped her arms around her midsection.
“It will be as you said,” he told her, his voice gentle. “We’ll get married. There are married servant couples all the time.”
“But you don’t wish it!”
“I am not such a brute as to sentence my child to a life of illegitimacy. I have firsthand knowledge of what that’s like, and this will be a small orc child, no elf mother to protect him, not as I had. We will get married, and if you do not wish it, you will do it for the child.”
She searched his gaze for several moments.
That was not the thing to say to a woman he was going to take to wife, obviously.
Women had romantic notions, and she admitted that she had been drawn to him.
He licked his lips. “I do find you comely, you know, quite appealing. With time, I am sure there will be feelings that can grow between us. You deserve to have someone who is devoted to you, and I will try…” He cleared his throat. “I will be that.”
She backed away from him, shaking her head. “I would rather you did not say things like that, lies like that. What did Igbar tell you?”
“You cannot think that I came to you because I did not want you,” he said.
“I think you came to me because you wanted her,” she said. “I think that she will be the mistress of this house, and she will see me growing heavy with your child, and she will despise me.”
“I will not let her harm you,” he said.
She searched his gaze again.
“She is… she can be… sometimes, I hate her,” he said, his voice guttural. “Perhaps, this, between you and me, perhaps it can be something that is actually loving and good. We owe it to the child to try.”
“If you had any influence over her, you would have stopped her from marrying Elrion,” said Nathre.
“Then you and I will leave,” he said, his nostrils flaring. “If we must, we’ll take the child and go.”
She hesitated for a very long time. Finally, she said, “I need to think about it.”
But she didn’t think about it for very long. She sent word with Igbar, only hours later, that she would accept his offer of marriage.
AERHRIL SAID GOODBYE to Flaihir that day. She always remembered that, remembered waving off the train and then heading back to Foxglove Peak, where she would spend only a few more nights before she marry Elrion.
Everything was quite difficult then there at the Peak, because she had been bought off by another man, and neither Celedin nor the steward were pleased with her.
However, Elrion had paid even more money for them to keep her, saying that it would not be proper for her to be under his roof before the wedding without a chaperone, and that he must insist she stay right where she was until the day of the wedding.
She walked back to the Peak and she dallied outside, looking out at the east field and then at the wildflowers, and then Dathor was there.
He came directly to her and said they must walk together. She had never seen him look so serious.
“What’s wrong?” she said to him. “Something’s happened.”
“I’ve done something,” he said. “Something awful. You’re going to hate me. But in the end, I suppose, it’s not really different than what you are going to do to me on your wedding night, which is only days away, so…”
“What are you talking about?”
“I have gotten Nathre with child,” he said. “I think I should marry her. I know you won’t like it, but I can’t leave her that way. She could be disgraced, and Elrion might throw her out—I don’t think so, but he might blame her, and it’s not her fault. I obviously talked her into it.”
Aerhril was still walking, but she was not breathing. She could not breathe. She just kept walking, staring straight ahead.
“Say something.”
She didn’t.
He took her by the arm and stopped her movement.
She turned and looked at him. “How long?” she whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“How long have you been fucking her?”
“It’s not like that. It was just once.”
“Was it the night you came and said we had to relinquish each other?” she demanded.
He nodded, looking miserable.
She wanted to cry, but then she didn’t want him to see her crying. Instead, she hit him. She punched him directly in the middle of his chest.
He absorbed it, standing there, head bowed.
She hit him again. And again. She punched and punched and punched—
He stopped her hands. “You don’t get to do that to me.”
“You deserve it.”
“I don’t care. They hit me, but not you. Please.”
Now, she was ashamed of herself. She let her hands fall at her sides.
They were quiet.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I regret it.”
“That is all well and good, but it changes nothing.”
“You must be sympathetic to her position. She is all on her own, and she is frightened, and she worries that you will blame her, but I have to explain to you—”
“Oh, stop it,” she said. “I’m not going to feel sorry for that whore of an orc woman who clearly threw herself at you.”
“It really wasn’t that way. It was my fault. You must blame me, and not her, and you certainly cannot blame the babe. Please, Aerhril, for my sake, you will try to feel soft towards my child?”
She did not want Dathor to have children with another woman! “You’re going to marry her?” She felt sick to her stomach, really and literally ill, and she actually gagged.
“Don’t,” he said.
She started walking again.