Chapter 4
Valka lay flat on his back, snoring in his furs, his grudge against the rest of his tribe temporarily forgotten as his dreams returned him to his younger days of glory. “Haaaaaah!” he bellowed in his sleep, his arm swiping for some imagined enemy while he dreamed.
“Valka kill you!” he shouted, before his arm fell back to his furs, and another feral snore rattled his cave walls.
Somewhere in the depths of his dreams, a woman sobbed pitifully.
“Stop! No whine! Bad female, whine like baby! Valka kill you, too!”
The woman continued sobbing and soon another was shrieking in fear.
“Weak female,” he scowled, flopping over onto his side.
More sobbing and shrieking irritated him to the point that he tried in his sleep to get up to make the female stop crying. Instead, he found himself sitting beside his bed of furs, flat on his ass on the dirt floor of his cave. He looked around while still in a half-dream state, while he struggled to make sense of the fact that he was alone, yet still heard the nerve-grating crying. His gaze traveled over the too-familiar walls of his cave, helping him establish reality from his dream.
Huffing like an irate bull, he got to his feet, following the grating sound. He stomped out of his cave and across the twenty or so feet of flat ledge to look down on those who lived beneath him. The sunlight blinded him momentarily as it shined in his barely awake eyes. Throwing his hands up to block the sun, he moved a few feet to his left to take advantage of the shadows his cliff created. Valka blinked again, trying to understand what he was seeing.
Apparently the skaevin had made multiple trips back to the ship during the night, because there were wooden crates and bolts of cloth scattered about. He even noticed some corked bottles of wine that had been set carefully aside. The very few females already incorporated into their tribe were working their way through the dozen or so crates to determine what was inside them that might be of use or value to the tribe. But most of the commotion originated a short distance from the crates and bolts of cloth. And those responsible for the commotion were the source of his irritation. Seven crying, sobbing, human females.
He threw his arms in the air to emphasize his outrage. “No whine!” he bellowed, still holding his arms aloft.
Most everyone on ground level stopped what they were doing and looked up at him. Even the crying females stopped sobbing, the worst of them hiccuping herself into silence as she watched him with terrified eyes.
One of the females of the tribe spoke to him calmly. “They’re afraid.”
“Back to ship!” he demanded throwing one of his hugely muscled arms out in the direction of the shore.
“We will not return them to the ship, they would die. We will keep them alive and sell them, or barter for goods with them. This land always needs more females!” Raska insisted.
“Do not barter them away! Keep them for ourselves! There are not enough in our tribe to go around! You always sell them!” Skala complained.
“Human female crrrryyyyy,” Valka said, making a face that mimicked the crying females and he drew out the word cry to sound like a whine. “Get Orc female!” Valka ordered, changing from a whine to an angry snarl. Then without waiting for an answer, he turned and stalked back toward his cave.
“I don’t know who you think you are, or what you have in mind, but you will not be selling me or my friends like so much cattle! We are human beings, whether or not some of us cry, and we will be treated as such!”
Valka hesitated, intrigued by the demanding voice that seemed to answer his complaint. He turned around and walked close enough to the ledge that he could peek over the side without being seen. He watched long enough to realize the female wasn’t addressing him personally. She was staring at Raska. He’d never seen a human female stand up to anyone, much less an Orc.
“Exactly… you are human, which means your life is decided by me,” Raska snapped, pounding his own chest.
“You are lucky our skaevin didn’t eat you along with your males!” Skala added, shouting at the woman who dared to defy them.
“They were not our males! We were held against our will and are glad to be free of them!” the loud, older woman shouted defiantly.
Skala’s head canted to the left as he regarded the female. Slowly he approached her, his head gradually leaning back to the right, then back to the left again. “Then you should be thankful we killed your captors and grateful for a chance to repay us by being a good female to any who are desperate enough to purchase you.”
“Desperate? Any male would be lucky to have any one of us as his wife!” she declared angrily.
Valka squatted to sit on his heels and make it less likely that he was seen as his curiosity got the best of him, leaving him unable to walk away quite yet. He sat quietly and listened, entertained for the moment.
“Wife? What is wife?” Raska asked, turning to look askance at some of those near enough to have heard the exchange.
“Wife is mate,” Liuka, one of the tribe’s females answered.
“Mate! You think you are mate?!” Skala asked, laughing boisterously. “You are old! You are loud! You are not pleasant! That one whines! There are only two or three that are worth keeping, the rest are too much trouble!” he said. “And you are all human! You will be lucky if you are rented out to those in need rather than hitched to a plow!”
“Rented out?!” Patricia screeched, starting to sob again. “To a, a monster? What would we be rented for?” she whined and started crying again.
“Sex. Strong males need sex. Most do not want to care for a mate,” Raska said matter-of-factly, thinking it would be better if they understood. “Do not allow Skala to frighten you, someone will want you. There is always someone, and he will be greatly respected if others of his tribe pay for time with you. You will be fed and sheltered, even you old woman.”
Several of the women started crying and sobbing, though the older woman wasn’t one of them.
Snarling, Skala moved toward them, his hand drawn back like he’d slap the sobbing women into silence. “Stop sniveling! You will not be fed and sheltered if you cry!” he demanded.
The older woman, Delia, darted in front of the sobbing women. Her head held high, her chin raised, her injured arm held against her own chest, her good hand fisted at her side. “If you think you will strike these women and not have repercussions from me, you are sadly mistaken. I have no doubt you will try to batter me as well, but be sure that you kill me. Because if you don’t, when I wake, at some point you will have to sleep and when you do, I will make sure that you never wake again!” she said angrily, her voice slow and measured as she glared at Skala.
Valka hid a slight grin, thoroughly enjoying the exchange.
“You will find yourself regretting these threats, human,” Skala snarled. “Perhaps I will claim you as mine just to have the pleasure of teaching you your place.”
Delia smiled coldly. “If that means sex, then please do.” She clacked her teeth together. “I’ll remove a few choice pieces of your body and spit them out in the dirt where the rest of you belongs.”
“You will regret that!” he shouted, though he stepped back, his hand unconsciously shielding his pelvic region from her view.
“I have many regrets, but I’m more than sure that anything involving injuring you won’t be among them,” Delia snapped.
“That is enough, Skala. Stop arguing with the human,” Raska said.
“She will pay for her insults,” Skala bit out.
“Just leave her!” Raska half-shouted. “You will not harm her. She is already surly. If you injure her and she cannot work, we will lose her value when we sell her.”
“No one will want her! I will teach her her place now,” Skala objected. “She will bring more in trade when she is subdued.”
“I said leave her,” Raska insisted.
Skala turned to glare at his brother.
“Someone will want her. There are lonely males in the other tribes. The last group of females we offered caused fights and even the death of one male,” Raska reminded him.
“I told you we need our own females! You always sell them. Keep these here, even this loud one, for our own use. After I force her into submission, those who cannot fight for their own, can share her.”
Raska turned to look at all the females. His gaze took in most of them sitting quietly, trying not to attract attention, then the sobbing one, and finally the loud one.
“If we keep the rest, we could still barter with the loud one and the crying one. Unless the loud one is damaged. That is what we’ll do. We’ll sell the loud one and the crying one.”
“She will pay for her insults. She will learn to respect a male,” Skala insisted.
“Leave her! I have decided!” Raska bellowed.
Skala remained where he was, having a stare off with his brother.
Raska stared back, daring him silently to openly defy him again.
Finally Skala stepped closer to the loud woman. “You have not seen the last of me,” he growled out, spitting at the ground near her feet.
She looked Skala up and down, then spat on the ground near his feet. “I believe that is your problem, not mine.”
Skala lost control, lunging for her.
She stepped back, ducking his first grab in her direction.
Raska moved quickly between them. “Enough!” he shouted, shoving Skala back. “Go! Go now before I decide to make you go!”
“You saw…”
“I saw you prod at her until she had no choice. Go, Skala!” Raska insisted.
Angrily, Skala stomped away, snarling and spouting threats with each step.
Raska turned toward the woman. “You should stop provoking him. I am the only one who can control him, and I am not always beside him.”
“Any male who would strike a woman deserves no respect,” Delia said.
Raska shook his head. “You are not in the human world. In this world, you respect the males or you die wishing you had. I will not kill my brother over a captive female. Do not force my hand.”
Valka stood and looked down over the women once more. This was not a good thing to happen to the females, or to the tribe. Any available female was trouble, and there were seven among them now. If your tribe had unmated females, your tribe was a target. There were not nearly enough females to go around one tribe, must less all of them. And any who wanted females of their own would gladly attack those who had them. Even those mated to a female had problems those without never had to worry about. If you were mated to your own female, other males often tried to kill you so they could fuck your female. Basically, any female was trouble under any conditions, someone would try to kill you, and eventually they’d succeed. It was easier to have none!
But human females were even more trouble than Orc females. They were weak and they complained about everything. They couldn’t be trusted to survive on their own if you had to go out to raid another tribe. And they cried. He hated crying. Crying meant weakness and weakness was not to be tolerated for any reason! The others like him out there, they wouldn’t want weak, simpering females. At the very least, the humans should have been left on the ship to drown. All of them. He grinned thinking back to the loud one. Except the loud female. She was not weak. She amused him, and she made Skala angry which was especially amusing in itself.