Chapter 13 #2
Sunrise found me on the trail, trudging through the wet grass and moss knolls. Finally, a couple of hours later, I came to the cabin.
“Khala!” I ran into the clearing by the fire pit.
Our tea kettle was set to boil on the grill, but the fire was dying, and Khala wasn’t anywhere I could see.
Heavy steps sounded inside the cabin. I hurried to it, but the door flew open before I reached it, and Pip poked his scruffy head out.
“Hey, Grat,” he greeted me. “I left the ale inside. Or do you want me to take it down into the cellar?”
“Where’s Khala?” I demanded as hope and terror led a brutal battle inside me.
“Who?” He stared at me blankly.
“A human woman. Is there a woman in the cabin?”
He smirked. “Well, I didn’t bring any with me. Did you?”
I raked my fingers over my skull in frustration.
“She has to be here somewhere.” I searched around the cabin, in the cellar, and even in the creek in case she decided to build another water contraption.
But Khala wasn’t here.
I rubbed my eyes, racking my brains about where she could be.
“Hunting!” It dawned on me. “She really took to hunting lately. I bet she decided to go look for something to practice her skills with the bow and arrow.”
Then I spotted an empty bowl at the edge of the tall grass by the creek. Khala’s footprints were in the wet dirt all around it.
“Too small for an orc, too large for a kid,” Pip noted, looking at the footprints from behind my shoulder. “Did your human woman leave them?”
“Yes. She isn’t here, and I’m afraid she may be in danger.”
“Well, she was here not so long ago. The coals are still smoldering in the fire. And these footprints look fresh,” he said.
I scouted the ground nearby more closely.
“The damn water dog was here too.” I pointed at the animal tracks that led into the grass.
“A water dog?” Pip gave a long, sad whistle. “Sorry, Grat. A human woman is no match in a fight with a wild water dog.”
“If it’s the same water dog that I believe it is, it’s not entirely wild.” I followed the footprints through the grass and over some patches of moss, hoping with all my heart that Khala was right about that dog and that it didn’t harm her.
“She knew the dog. Fed it too,” I said, holding on to that hope.
But could one really fully trust an animal, especially such a fierce predator like a water dog?
A short way from the cabin, a movement behind a large oak tree caught my eye. I paused and raised an arm for Pip to stop too.
He crouched down and moved another step forward, peering through the underbrush.
“Duke’s guards,” he whispered.
Dread pressed on my chest at the same time as rage pounded inside my skull, urging me into a fight. I moved closer, catching shreds of their conversation.
“…animal attack?” a guard asked.
“W-what kind of a beast would do such a thing?” another one stuttered, sounding horrified.
I stepped around to see what was happening behind the oak trunk.
The duke lay on the ground not far from the tree.
His head was turned at an unnatural angle, with his throat ripped out.
Blood and gore marred his silk shirt and sky-blue coat.
About a dozen guards stood around with horrified expressions, inspecting the body.
Twelve humans weren’t going to keep me away from Khala. I walked over, no longer hiding.
“Orc!”
They drew their swords, and I raised mine.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I bellowed.
“Grat, I’ll take the ones on the right,” Pip said quietly, taking his place at my side with his mace raised.
A flash of olive green on the ground behind the guards caught my attention.
I remembered the smile Khala gave me when trying on the olive-green woolen dress I gave her.
She had looked so pretty, spinning in it to make its wide skirt with red and orange embroidered flowers fly in a twirl around her hips.
“Khala…” The beloved name left my lips with a panicked breath rushing from my lungs.
“Back off, orc!” The duke’s guards formed a line of defense around their dead duke.
“Fuck off.” I plowed through them, swinging my sword left and right on my way to Khala.
Not holding back, I killed a few and maimed many more. With a battle cry, Pip rushed into an attack, tossing the guards in all directions too. Those who escaped my blade and Pip’s mace scurried away like rats.
With my way cleared, I fell down on one knee by the broken body of the woman who stole my heart.
“Khala…” I lifted her head in my palm.
The beading of the ribbon around her head caught the sunlight, sparkling. But that was the only sign of life about her.
A suffocating stillness descended over the creek.
Pip dropped the arm with his sword, blood dripping from his wide blade into the moss.
“I’m so sorry, Grat,” he said somberly.
He saw what I refused to comprehend or accept. Khala’s belly was ripped open, with her guts pulled out and strewn around her. Blood soaked her dress and pooled under her body. The torn loops of her intestines hung loosely from her sides in a gory mess.
This wound was not survivable.
I was too late.
Sorrow crushed my heart. Despair gutted me. Tossing my head back, I howled in agony like a wounded beast. The world around me went dark, despite the sunshine. I was only half-aware of the orcs crashing through the underbrush to join us on the creek bank.
“Is she…” Agor’s voice filtered to me as if through a fog.
“Gone,” Pip said quietly.
“And the duke?”
“Also dead.”
“Have you killed all his guards?” Becca asked softly as the orcs from my keep gathered around. All armed and ready to fight. Only they were too late, too.
“No. Some ran away,” Pip said.
White-hot anger burst through me. The agony of loss forged into the intense thirst for revenge.
“Kill them all,” I growled, fisting the handle of my sword so hard, my knuckles cracked and my fingers ached.
“No. Leave them,” came the unexpectedly quiet voice that I knew so well and loved so dearly.
Shock jolted my body like a lightning strike. Hope bloomed anew.
“Khala?” I stared at her.
She gazed at me without a shadow of pain in her expression.
Becca sank to her knees at Khala’s side across from me.
“Are you alive? But how?” she asked.
Words deserted me. My throat closed up, choking my cry of relief.
Khala was alive, and I didn’t care how.