Chapter 8
ENG
Ishould have been relieved to wake up alone in bed, but I wasn’t.
When I’d brought the shrew to my hovel I’d not given a thought to how awkward the morning might be or how I’d evict her once she was inside.
No, I’d been thinking with my hand-axe, and all night the only logistics I concerned myself with were what part of her naked body I would taste and touch next.
I didn’t want her to stay. I just wanted to satiate this crazy desire we had for each other, then go our separate ways.
When I awoke to the empty spot beside me, I realized I was not satiated, and that the hollow lonely feeling her warm body had chased away last night was back.
I showered, put on clean clothes, went to a place a block away for hot food, half expecting the shrew to slide onto the stool beside me. She didn’t. And my chest ached as the seat beside me remained empty.
After breakfast, I walked over to the arena to see what the other orcs were up to.
Ugwyll and Ozar were on the ice. Bwat was nowhere to be found.
The locker room was empty, but I did find a couple of the orcs in the weight room throwing metal disks back and forth.
Boredom was becoming my default, and I didn’t like it one bit.
There were plenty of times back home when I’d been bored, but I’d always managed to sneak out of the castle to find something interesting to occupy my time. It shouldn’t be any different here.
Abandoning the arena, I walked through the city, finding myself once more at the port where the impressively huge ships eased their way through a channel so the giant crane could remove the truck-sized boxes.
A wizened human male with a purple knit hat and a tan coat sat on a nearby bench watching the ships, so I joined him.
We sat in silence for a while, then he nodded at one of the container ships.
“I used to work at the port here.” His voice was full of gravel and he spoke with a thick accent.
“Back in the old country when I was young, I worked at Gdansk. So did my father and my father’s father.
I helped unload these same kind of containers from ships that came on the Baltic Sea.
You do what you know, what your family has always done.
So when my wife and I came here, I got a job at this port. Same job, different place.”
You do what you know, what your family has always done.
“We have a port like this in our kingdom, in our capital city,” I told the man.
“Our ships are not so large, and we do not use these containers, but we are a major commerce area for goods. Merchants wait for the arrival of their product, then haul it in wagons across the continent to shops and stores.”
The old man nodded. “Do you help load and unload the ships? You look strong enough to do the work of three longshoremen, my friend.”
I shook my head. “No. I used to dream of such a job, or that I might travel with the merchants or sail with the ships as they took our goods to other lands. But I was born to a family that governs. And that will be my job when my father is ready to pass it along.”
He chuckled. “I had dreams of being a man in a suit with a briefcase full of important papers, walking with confidence into the Chancellery to argue in favor of laws that made our country a better place. But in the end I did what the men in my family always have done. Children seem to want what they cannot have.”
I rubbed my chest, feeling as if the old man had just shot me with an arrow. “Grown males and females want what they cannot have as well.”
The man nodded. “It can be frightening to break generations of tradition. I’d grown up learning about this job. It was baked in my very bones from my first breath. Sometimes it’s safer, easier to do what you know.”
“What you are expected to do,” I agreed. “Step outside our destiny and we face inevitable failure. Some of us are born to sail the seas. Others are born to govern. There is no sense in fighting fate.”
The old man smiled at me. “But is it fate? And is failure truly inevitable if we choose differently?”
“In my experience, yes.” My reply was sharp, bitter with the remembrance of youthful dreams shattered.
He shrugged. “The greatest of achievements do not occur without risk, without failure. If our heart demands something so different than what we have been told our fate wants, which is correct?”
I was so confused. “But you said you spent your life doing what the males in your family always did. You accepted your fate.”
“I had a good woman by my side. I found joy in my wife, in my children, in my friendships.” He shrugged again. “It has been a good life and for the most part I have no regrets. But every now and then I wonder what my life would have been had I mustered the courage to do what my heart wanted.”
I had a vision of my future—of the meek, submissive wife I’d been sent to find. Of decades waiting in the wings and doing nothing beyond breeding and appearing at ceremonial functions. It did not seem anywhere near as satisfying as what this man had experienced in his own life.
Then I felt a spike of fear at the thought of risking everything and failing…again.
“My situation is different,” I argued, hating the defensiveness in my voice.
“I’m sure it is. And I’m sure you will be very happy governing.”
There wasn’t the slightest hint of irony in the man’s reply, but I still felt as if I were being personally attacked.
“The trick is to know if you are just too lazy to fight for those things your heart wants, or if they are truly beyond your ability to attain,” he added.
Ouch. Ouch. I didn’t reply. I just sat there, staring at the port, wondering what exactly my heart did want? It had been a very long time since I’d asked that question.
“What do you think when you see these ships unloading their wares?” the man asked.
The brightly colored containers, the crane, the oversized ships…
it all reminded me of an orclet’s toys. Blocks and intricately crafted, whimsical items with gears and pulleys.
It made me think of my childhood, and of what my own children might see and do when they managed to escape the nannies and tutors for a few hours.
But there was something else I thought of.
“I admire how so many ships full of products do not cause chaos in the port. The humans all know exactly where each container came from, what it holds, where it is going. And when the trucks arrive to take the product, I see how quickly the containers are located and loaded. Everything is organized. We have often been limited not just by the size of our port, but by our ability to keep track of it all in a way that allows appropriate taxes and fees to be collected and illegal products to be found and seized.”
“For all of our computers and detailed work processes, we concern ourselves with that too,” the man commented.
“This is one of the largest, most busy commercial ports in the nation. If you are here to learn, you could do worse than to talk with the employees about what works and what doesn’t work.
The executives and government will give you a bunch of bull, but the people working at the port each day won’t blow any smoke up your ass. ”
I nodded, grateful that no one was going to attempt to blow smoke up my ass, even though I could subdue most of these humans with my arms tied behind my back.
“Thank you. I’m not really here to learn about human infrastructure, though. I’m here to find a human female to wed,” I told him.
“Wed?” He laughed, the sound surprisingly loud. “Good for you! I should introduce you to my granddaughter. She’s a real spitfire. I think you’d get along.”
I immediately thought of the shrew, then shook my head to rid my brain of all the remembrances of last night.
“I don’t want a spitfire. I want a quiet, obedient, submissive female who is fertile. She will bear my children, and occupy herself in gentle female pursuits and charity.”
He snorted. “Sounds boring as hell. No one wants a woman like that, my friend. Trust me, you want a partner who isn’t afraid to tell you you’re full of shit when you are.
You want someone who can fight by your side, who is strong enough to hold your family together when there’s barely enough money to keep the lights on and the heat running.
You want someone who will lend you her strength when you need it, who will inspire you to amazing acts. You do not want this mieczak.”
Again, I thought of the shrew, of the expression on her face when I made her come, of the glitter in her dark eyes when she looked at me, at the way she ran her nails down my back.
“A spitfire is not a suitable princess,” I informed him.
“Who says?” He laughed again. “I know who I’d rather spend my life with. Actually I have spent my life with her, and wouldn’t want it any other way.” The man held out his hand. “I am Piotr Filipkowski.”
I shook his hand. “I’m Eng, son of the King Mrong of Clan Waragur. I am a prince, the heir to the largest of the orc clans. Waragur is a kingdom, and I will be the King one day.”
“It is nice to meet you, Enzo.” The man stood. “I’m here most afternoons if you ever want to talk. My friends and I also like to visit The Old Cellar pub around nine each morning, if you find yourself in the neighborhood. I’ll even pay for your first drink.”
“Thank you. I hope to see you again soon,” I said. And as I watched the man walk away, I realized that I meant it.
I thought about what the man said as I walked back through the city.
Then I put all those thoughts aside when I stopped into a corner sandwich shop for lunch and checked the Tinder app on my phone.
Swipe left. Left. Left. Left. By the mountain gods, these human females were rather terrifying, and not in a good way.
Just as I was about to delete my profile and remove the app from my phone, I saw a female who had swiped right on me.
Elsa Canton. She was a princess of a place called Canton-onia, and from her message she seemed to be facing the same family pressure to wed a suitable individual as me.
The picture was…okay. The princess looked very much like the females in the magazines I’d found at the arena, only with considerably more clothing on.
She didn’t have raven black curls. She didn’t have warm, golden skin and dark brown eyes.
She didn’t have muscles that would rival that of a female orc—although it was difficult to determine that as she was wearing a shirt and pants.
She wasn’t tall, bold, and sharp-witted.
She was perfect. Why did that make me feel as if I was being buried alive in thick mud?
Before I could second guess myself, I swiped right, then shut the app.
You want someone who will lend you her strength when you need it, who will inspire you to amazing acts.
I blocked the old man’s voice out of my head, and shoved my memories of the shrew sprawled naked across my bed from my mind. What I wanted didn’t matter. What fate had destined for me, what I’d been born to do, that’s what mattered.