Chapter 9 #2
I scoffed. “I don’t need a weapon to best you, little newt.”
That was a lie. Becca might be a human and a woman, but she was fast and skilled. She’d bested many orcs, and one needed every weapon they could get to go against her.
“Ha!” She hiked up her chin, raising her hand to the handle of the sword strapped to her back. “Let’s go. Right now, big guy.”
She bounced on her heels, pumped up with energy.
I, on the other hand, felt not energetic at all.
“Some other day.” I waved her off.
They both just stood there and stared at me with their mouths open.
I understood their confusion. Normally, I’d be the one egging them on to go sparring, then would party all night. And here I was, listlessly nursing a mug of ale right after breakfast.
“Um…” Agor scratched his beard, clearly looking for something to say but finding nothing.
“Market day is today,” Becca announced brightly. “You should go, Grat. See if you find something nice there. You like pretty things, don’t you?” She gestured at the rows of golden hoops with chains in my ears.
I did like “pretty things.” I had the best silk shirts in the keep. Except that right now, I preferred the tunic that my “wild thing” slept in to any fine clothing out there.
I chugged the ale down in two huge gulps.
“You know what? I’m going back hunting,” I said. “I got really, really lucky at the cabin this year, and I’m not going to waste this chance.”
Shoving the barstool back, I got up, but Agor stopped me with a hand on my arm.
“Listen, Grat, I’d rather you stay in the keep now. It’s not safe out there. I’ve got some reports of humans being sighted in the Wetlands.”
“Since when do humans make our woods unsafe?” I smirked, brushing him off. “Even the wild boars are safe with them around, since most humans are shitty hunters.”
We had the whole settlement of humans at the edge of the woods. They were a nuisance sometimes, and a lot of fun other times, but mostly harmless.
“Hey,” Becca, who was a human from that settlement, bristled. “We’re hunting just fine now that you actually let us hunt in the Wetlands.”
Agor placed an arm around his wife, then spoke to me, lowering his voice, “I meant other humans, not from the settlement. My men from the keep found their tracks while hunting a few days ago.”
“Are you sure those were human tracks? Maybe the wild things have returned?” There was always that possibility, regardless whether Khala turned out to be a wild thing or not.
“Only if the wild things have learned how to speak, ride horses, handle weapons, and dress themselves in clothing with gold and jewels,” Agor argued, then shook his head. “There’s lots of them, Grat. All are armed, but not for hunting.”
Worry now tightened my chest too.
“Did you see them?” I asked. “The humans? Do you know where they came from?”
“No. But my men traced their tracks all the way to their camps. They say it’s a rich caravan, with wagons upon wagons filled with trunks. It’d be nice to ambush them and raid their caravan. All that loot, can you imagine?”
“It doesn’t hurt to be careful,” Becca added somberly.
“Humans may be small when compared to orcs, but they can be just as vicious and even more conniving. There’s a whole army guarding the caravan.
It won’t just be an ambush, but a real war if we attack.
We’ll need to find out who they are and what they came here for first.”
Agor scratched his beard in thought. “The problem with humans is that no matter how many you kill, there are always more coming. This caravan seems important. But if so, how many more might come looking for it if we loot it?”
I had no reply to that. Historically, humans had been staying away from our Wetlands. The land that bog orcs loved and called home held little value to anyone born and raised elsewhere in Helfallow.
Becca’s caravan came here two years ago out of desperation, not in hope for a better life, but running away from a worse one. Chased out of their homeland, they had no choice.
Maybe these new humans had no choice, either? Or maybe they just got lost on their way elsewhere? Once they figure out their bearings, they’d be gone.
“I’d rather you stay put now, Grat. Forget about the bet,” Agor said. “Wait until these strangers leave the Wetlands or until we decide what to do about them being here.”
Meanwhile, Khala would be alone in the cabin, in the middle of the Wetlands, likely facing danger.
“I can’t stay.” I shook my head resolutely. “In fact, I’ll be going back today, right now, actually, after I briefly stop at the market to get some pretty things.”
I left later that morning, way before lunch. With no meat to carry, I’d loaded my shoulder basket with the things I got at the market, pretty and useful things that I hoped Khala would like.
The thoughts of her added a spring to my step. I’d been walking for hours through the difficult paths of the Wetlands, yet despite the exhaustion, my feet seemed to be moving faster the closer to the cabin I got.
Soon, I’d see her smiling face again, and my mind would finally calm again. With Khala by my side, I’d stop worrying about her.
A scream pierced the late evening air. And I knew exactly whose scream it was.
Blood froze in my veins. I ran, crashing through the underbrush. I didn’t stop to even drop my shoulder basket, frantically grabbing for weapons.
Khala screamed.
She was in danger.
And whoever scared her like that was going to pay for it, dearly.
With a mace in one hand and a sword in the other, I broke through the bushes and onto the clearing in front of my hunting cabin.
A giant mud toad hovered its disgusting open mouth over Khala, who lay on her back on the ground.
Hot, red rage blinded me. With a thundering roar, I rushed to the toad and smashed my mace against its wide, flat head.
Khala twisted at the waist, reaching for the ax on the ground to her right.
The toad made a gross wet sound deep in its throat. The pockets on its back opened, releasing two mockheads. Only two. The other pockets seemed empty already, the toad’s slimy skin hanging loosely over their openings.
I cut one of the mockheads with my sword.
A growl on my left made me pivot that way, with both my sword and my mace raised. A fully-grown river dog faced me, with its head menacingly low and its ears flattened against its skull.
A river dog presented a far greater danger than a toad’s mockhead. I swung my mace at the canine.
“No!” Khala scrambled to her feet, putting herself between me and the dog. “Don’t hurt her!”
The last mockhead leaped toward my woman, snapping its mouth full of teeth. I dropped my mace on it, smashing it into nothing but a wet spot.
The toad waddled toward Khala, still determined to make dinner out of her.
Khala swung the ax, holding it with both hands, then embedded it firmly into the toad’s eye, bursting it open.
Blood and mud dripped down the toad’s face.
With its one eye destroyed, its other one rotated in its socket wildly.
I adjusted my sword in my hand, stepping around Khala to get to the toad. A loud “humph” came from Khala’s chest as she raised her ax again and hacked it into the toad’s shoulder. The creature belched out a screech, moving on Khala with its mouth wide open and ready to swallow her whole.
“Fuck,” I cursed, setting my mace down on the toad’s head, popping its other eye out and smashing its skull to pieces.
The toad burped a bubble of foul-smelling slime, then dropped to the ground, dead.
“Thanks,” Khala panted, catching her breath in labored gasps.
“I never thought I could lift this.” She glanced at my massive ax in her hands with appreciation.
The expression of pride and determination on her face was that of a warrior queen, not of a wild thing lost in the woods.
But there certainly was a wild side to her that even she didn’t seem to have known about.
“Well we did it, didn’t we?” She beamed at me.
“We sure did.” I grinned, tossing my weapons aside and opening my arms wide for a hug I ached to give her.
With the sweetest smile that I’d missed so much, she jumped into my arms.
“I missed you, my wild thing,” I confessed, catching her and pressing her to me.
She cupped my cheek. “I can’t believe I’d ever say this to any man, especially a bog orc, but I missed you too.”
The tear in the tunic on her shoulder was smeared with red.
“You’re hurt,” I worried.
She glanced at it.
“Oh, one of those nasty things bit me. Is their bite poisonous?”
“No.”
“Then it can wait. I made something for you, to make the time pass faster,” she said with a shy smile.
“I brought you a whole basket of pretty things too.” I shrugged the straps of the basket off my shoulders, finally setting the thing down.
“What pretty things?”
Unwilling to let go of her just yet, I shifted her to my side. Holding her in a side hug, I tossed back the lid of the basket to reveal a load of colorful fabrics.
“I bought you tunics, dresses, pants, and skirts,” I said. “All made for women and in your size.”
She stared at the folded clothes in disbelief. “You went shopping? For me?”
Her shock flustered me. I rarely bought things for others. I didn’t recall ever buying clothes for anyone, but buying them for Khala made me happy.
I thought about the way I had found her—hungry, painfully skinny, and covered in dirt. My heart overflowed with joy knowing that she would never go cold or hungry again, that it was in my power to make her life a little easier.
Her eyes lit up with delight as she reached into the basket.
“Ooh, what’s this?”
She pulled out the green silk ribbon I’d bought in a spur of a moment.
It costed as much as a dress because it was made from emerald-green silk and embroidered with golden flowers and gemstones.
The tiny blue beads along the edges were the exact color of Khala’s eyes, sky-blue, and I knew I had to have it.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
A happy smile lit up her face when she looked up at me. “The ribbon is so bright and cheerful.”
“My people love colors,” I agreed. “The more the better. The blue beads here are my favorite.”
I took the ribbon from her hands and tied it around her head, making a bow under her braid.
“I was right,” I grunted with satisfaction. “The blue beads are exactly the same color as your eyes.”
“Thank you. It’s the most beautiful thing I’d ever gotten, Grat.”
She squinted in the pale light of the dying sunset, smiling. And to me, there was nothing more beautiful in the world than her.