Chapter 11
Melelea
A week passes pleasantly, even though my dreams are a dark and cold void, telling me that the demon is still at large.
Grazrath is still blocking the connection between us, which I suppose is a good sign.
If I was getting closer to where he lurks, I would be able to push past the barrier he’s put between us.
The fact that I cannot means that we are still far from where he is, which means that his campaign of blood hasn’t come this far south yet.
He may still be in Adrik. Still, we are alert.
Any day now, his attacks will reach Orik. It is not a matter of if, but when.
The only other thing that mars our week of peaceful travel is the bickering of Dame Zera and Gunag.
Every hour it seems, they find something new to fuss over.
Usually it is Gunag being high-handed or arrogant, baiting Dame Zera into speaking and she can never resist letting him know how much she dislikes him.
Honestly, they are an even match in stubbornness.
It is exhausting and they really should stop resisting the pull of Fate and just fuck already.
The thought is unkind, and I keep it to myself.
Dame Zera is a friend to me and I’d not risk offending her for the world.
With Gunag’s sensitive ears inherited from his elf mother, he’d be sure to hear me if I said such a thing to Wodred, even in jest, and I have no doubt that he’d use my words as a way to spark another fight with Zera.
It is relatively easy to ignore them when I ride with Wodred, however.
My orc bodyguard is an interesting and thoughtful conversationalist and I enjoy speaking to him as we travel.
It is novel to speak to an orc like him.
He never doubts or belittles my knowledge, taking what I say as fact, and allows me to teach him things he does not know.
We discuss the stars and runes, and in turn, he surprises me by speaking of farming and the land.
His heart is in the soil as he is fascinated by growing things.
I would have expected him to tell me of his past battles and conquests, but he actually seems to studiously avoid such topics, as though he is not proud of them, which is unlike any orc I have ever known.
I see much of the orc that my son became in Wodred, and I thank the gods once again that I was able to put Rognar in his training.
On the morning of the seventh day we have been traveling, Wodred looks around and I can feel some tension leave his body as he takes in our surroundings.
“We have reached the ka Xonok lands,” he rumbles behind me.
I would have suspected such a thing without him telling me. It looks just as he described, with rolling fields, yellowed from autumn and ready to be harvested, and beautiful hills and colorful forests. Cozy-looking cottages abut these hills, the homes of Wodred’s clan and family.
“It’s beautiful, Wodred,” I tell him.
The quiet orc looks down, his eyes arrested on my face, and says, “Yes, it is.”
I feel my silver skin growing hot, but I quickly school my features. He probably did not mean that the way that it sounded. He could not have been calling me beautiful, could he? No. I’m just letting Adalind’s words from a week ago haunt me.
And they have been. Haunting me, that is. I have never before noticed how handsome Wodred is, but now I cannot seem to stop noticing it. With his proud curling trollborn horns, his square jaw and jutting double tusks. His deep green skin and black eyes that hold a depth of thought behind them.
I’ve also noticed other things. How he’s so quietly careful to be respectful at all times, his regard for my opinion, his gentle hands when he helps me down from his warbeast. I notice that he is slow to laugh or smile, but when he does it is like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.
All things I should not be seeing, because Wodred is not for me.
But what if he could be? A quiet, rebellious part of me asks, and that voice is getting louder everyday. What if he is who your mother prophesied?
Still, I must ignore it. I must. My heart is not to be trusted; that is a lesson I learned the very hardest way. So, I merely dismiss the thought that Wodred might be flirting with me and ask, “Will we be seeing your family?”
Wodred nods before looking back to the path in front of us. “I sent word to them before we left Castle Ilustan. Sawa is expecting to host us.”
“With her ‘brood?’” I ask, feeling anticipation at the thought. I love being around children. They are so sweet, so trusting, so innocent. It makes me wish to protect them with all my heart.
“Yes, it will be very loud,” Wodred responds, and for a moment, he sounds perturbed at the thought.
I laugh at his worried tone. “A little loudness is good for the soul every once in a while.”
Wodred looks back at me, a bemused look on his normally stoic face. “If you say so.”
“Do you not like the sound of children?” I ask, curious.
The orc general shrugs. “I am not used to it. By the time I ever saw orclings they were already the training age. Orclings of twelve or more summers can be their own kind of trouble, but they are usually not as loud once they are in the Horde.”
“Did you never want your own orclings?” I ask, then freeze. That was a very personal question. Too intimate for a casual conversation on warbeastback.
Wodred, though, does not seem offended that I’m being shamelessly nosy. “Having orclings was never important to me. I do not think it is in the stars for me.”
“You don’t know that,” I argue. “You are still virile. You could find a female in her child-bearing years and . . .”
“That will never happen, Melelea,” Wodred interrupts me, his voice kind but firm. “A child-bearing female would be little more than a child to me at this point. I have no use for a female that I would be old enough to father.”
“You are very different from many males I have known then,” I reply. “Youth is often very prized.”
“Youth is fleeting,” Wodred says dismissively. “If I were to take a mate, I would want her to have wisdom and maturity. Someone whom I could talk to.”
“Not all races have a short child-bearing window,” I say. “Elves can bear children into their sixties.”
Trolls can until their fifties, though I do not say this aloud.
I don’t want to seem like I am volunteering myself as an option for his mate.
Not only would that be presumptuous, but it is also not what I mean, and I cannot count myself as one who can have children anyway.
Rognar’s birth was a hard one, and the healer told me that I would never conceive again, a secret I kept from Guruk, as I knew that it would enrage him.
I did not want to give him another reason to treat me poorly.
Wodred just shakes his head again, “I feel too old to be a father. Besides, as General of the Northern Horde, I have brought up my share of trainees and have felt both fatherly pride and exasperation with them. I do not feel that I am missing anything.”
I do not say anything more on the subject, not only because to press would be rude, but I do feel that it is a shame that Wodred will never be a father.
He would be a good one. Stern when he needed to be, yes, but patient and kind most of the time.
He would use his rare smiles for his children, I know it, and they would feel like they were the most special orclings in the world.
He would be an even better grandfather, I wager.
But if he does not want children, that is his choice.
If he does not want children, that means that he could want you, whispers that rebellious voice in my mind, but I hush it.
At that moment, there’s another outburst behind us, Dame Zera exploding at Gunag. I cannot hear the specifics, but I hear Wodred sigh.
“Gunag is one of those trainees who fills me both with pride and despair,” Wodred comments so quietly that I can barely make out his words.
He doesn’t want Gunag to overhear us. “He is too brash, too arrogant. I know that it comes from his background, but he will need to grow up if he hopes to win a stubborn and proud female like Dame Zera.”
I have heard some of Gunag’s background.
He is the child of an outcast orc who Claimed his elven mate, only to be abandoned by her.
His father died of the wasting sickness that comes to those separated from their bonded.
Gunag became an orphan who despised the elves and everything to do with their culture.
He is talented as Axe of the King and a prized warrior, but it is true that he doesn’t know how to win a female, especially one like Dame Zera, who has her own past and stories to tell.
“They are actually a good match in some ways,” I tell Wodred, careful to keep my own voice low. “They are both stubborn, love their positions, and are loyal to a fault. But Gunag needs to stop needling her. It only drives her far from him.”
“He is angry that she refuses him,” Wodred says, still quiet.
“He has been rejected enough in his life that he resents it. I think he also resents that she is his fated mate in the way of the elves, a reminder of the side of him that he has spurned. Still, he wants her and cannot stop. There is a madness in wanting what you cannot have.”
The orc general sounds like he knows from experience, but I do not press him for his story. I have never heard of Wodred taking a female, even as a bed companion, but that does not mean that he has not or that he has not had an affair of the heart go badly. It’s none of my business.
Ahead of us, a happy cry splits the air, pulling our focus. I look up and see a group of elfborn orclings running up to us.
“Uncle Wodred!”
“Uncle!”
“He’s here!”
Wodred draws his warbeast to a halt, so as not to trample the little ones who have surrounded us.
“Oh ho, what’s this?” Wodred asks, one of his rare smiles crinkling the lines at the corners of his eyes, “What are you lot doing at the edge of the village?”
“Mama told us we could wait for you!” one of the orclings exclaims. She looks to be maybe six or seven summers.
She smiles with a gape-toothed grin and reaches for the nose of Wodred’s warbeast. My heart stops for a second, remembering the snapping teeth of Guruk’s warbeast, but Wodred’s just placidly allows the little one to stroke his nose, a long-suffering look in its wolven eyes.
“How did your mama know we would come today?” asks Wodred, sounding amused.
“She did not,” one of the other older orclings says, this one maybe ten. “We’ve been waiting after chores for the last two days. Mama said you’d be arriving any day now, and we didn’t want to miss your coming.”
“Well, we are thankful for such a warm welcome,” Wodred tells the orclings, who all beam with pride.
“You’ll be staying the night, won’t you, Uncle Wodred?” asks yet another orcling. Wodred was not lying when he said that his sister had a brood.
“We will,” Wodred answers. “We will also need to resupply. You all can help us, can you not?”
The orclings start chattering excitedly all at once, promising their help and asking questions. It’s impossible to separate who said what.
“All right, all right,” Wodred says, still sounding warmer and more jovial than I have ever heard him. “Now stand back. I need to help Lady Melelea down.”
The orclings stop chattering at that, seemingly noticing me sitting in front of Wodred for the first time.
Wodred dismounts and reaches up to grasp my waist and help me down.
My skin tingles under my dress when he touches me, an awareness that I’m unsure is welcome or not.
I thought to never take notice of another male again, but this male is Wodred.
Kind, honorable Wodred. He has never hurt me, never failed me.
It confuses me and weakens my resolve to stay aloof.
When I am on the ground, the littlest orcling, the gap-toothed one, rushes forward with wide eyes.
“Are you really the king’s mother?” she asks, awe and reverence in her sweet little voice.
I smile at her and crouch down so that I am at her level. “That is true. I am Melelea. What is your name, little one?”
“I’m Kiva. I am the youngest right now, but Mama will have another baby soon and I will be a big sister then,” she announces proudly.
Then she says, with the guileless certainty of a child, “Mama says that the king is good because you were his mother and that we should all be thankful to you. Is that true?”
My heart squeezes at her words. I sometimes think that Rognar became who he is in spite of me.
That without my weakness, I could have protected him more.
I could have taken him from Guruk and we could have lived in peace somewhere else, where my husband’s fury and pain could never touch us.
I am almost certain that Rognar became the orc that he is because of Wodred more than me.
When I don’t respond right away, Wodred interrupts, “Of course it is true, Kiva. You know better than to question your mother’s knowledge.”
Kiva giggles at her uncle’s words, then reaches out a small green hand, her claws sheathed to grab mine. “Come! Mama will want to meet you!”
Sending Wodred a look of bemusement, I let Kiva lead me forward.
All his nieces and nephews surround us as we walk forward, chattering and introducing themselves, though it is hard to keep names straight with the voices saying them.
Wodred follows behind, leading his warbeast, a steady, calming presence at my back.
I turn back to see Gunag and Dame Zera have dismounted as well, leading their own mounts forward into the village.
I suppose it’s time to meet Wodred’s family.