Chapter 1 Kielyne #2
I grab my knife. Get it halfway out of my boot before another soldier’s boot cracks across my knuckles and sends it spinning into the dirt.
Twelve against one. Stupid. Stupid.
Hands grab my arms, my shoulders, forcing me to my knees in the blood-soaked mud. Torvin straightens, rubbing his thigh, fury twisting his features.
“Should’ve gone easy.” He draws his sword. The blade catches the failing light, gleaming dull red. “Would’ve been quicker that way. Now I’m going to take my time.”
I don’t close my eyes. I refuse to give him the satisfaction.
The sun burns against my face, the hands on my shoulders dig in hard enough to bruise, and I think about Tam—my brother, nineteen years old, probably bent over a forge right now, not knowing his sister is about to die on a road full of corpses.
I’m sorry. The thought is quiet, almost peaceful. I’m sorry I won’t get to see you again.
Torvin raises his sword.
A shadow falls across his face.
An orc I’ve never seen before moves like controlled violence given form.
One moment, Torvin is standing over me, blade raised, triumph gleaming in his pale gaze. The next moment, blood sprays hot across my face and Torvin isn’t standing anymore.
I don’t see the strike that kills him. I don’t see the orc captain arrive. He’s simply there, seven feet of obsidian-green muscle and fury, twin axes singing through the air in a blur of iron and death.
The soldier on my left dies before he can draw his weapon. The one on my right manages to get his sword halfway out of its scabbard before an axe splits him from shoulder to sternum.
I scramble backward, hands slipping in the mud, heart slamming against my ribs. The orc captain cuts through the remaining soldiers like wheat before a scythe. No wasted motion. No mercy. Each strike is precise, efficient, lethal. Bodies drop around me in a spreading circle of carnage.
One soldier runs. The orc doesn’t chase him—just pivots, arm cocking back, and hurls one of his axes in a flat spinning arc. It takes the runner between the shoulder blades. He goes down twitching.
Silence.
The orc captain turns to face me.
He’s the largest orc I’ve ever seen up close—hulking, brutal, designed for destruction.
Ritual scars cover his arms and chest, visible through his torn leather armor.
His skin is darker green than most, almost black in the shadows.
One tusk is capped in gold, gleaming dully against the obsidian of his jaw.
His gaze finds mine. Dark. Impenetrable. The intensity of it roots me in place.
He moves toward me. I try to stand, to run, to do anything except kneel here in the blood like a lamb waiting for slaughter. My legs refuse to cooperate.
The orc crouches in front of me. This close, I can see the predator stillness in him, the coiled tension of a creature that could snap me in half without breaking stride. His breath comes steady and slow. Not winded. Twelve men dead, and he’s not even breathing hard.
“You.” His voice is gravel and command, low enough to vibrate in my chest. “You saved Grothak.”
I blink. Try to process the words. “The—the orc by the wagon?”
“My lieutenant. My brother in blood.” His hand closes around my wrist—not cruel, but inexorable. Unbreakable. “His wounds were mortal. He breathes because of your needle.”
“I’m a medic.” The words come out hoarse. “It’s what I—”
Something cold clicks around my wrist.
I look down. Iron. A manacle, tight but not painful, attached to a chain that leads to a cuff already locked around his own broad wrist.
No.
“You saved one of mine.” The orc captain rises, pulling me to my feet with casual strength. His gaze holds mine, dark with something I can’t name. “Now you’re coming with me.”
I yank against the chain. It doesn’t budge. “You can’t—I’m not—”
“Debts are blood-bound among my people.” He starts walking, and the chain forces me to stumble after him. “You gave Grothak his life. Until I’ve repaid that debt, you belong to me.”
“I don’t want your repayment!” I dig my heels into the mud, trying to stop him. It’s like trying to stop a landslide. “I was just doing my job—”
He stops. Turns. For one terrible moment, that dark, impenetrable gaze pins me in place.
“Your people want you dead.” His voice drops, rougher than before. “Those weren’t the only hunters. There will be more. You can stay here and let them find you, or you can come with me and survive long enough to hate me for it.”
I open my mouth to argue. To scream. To demand he release me and let me take my chances.
But I look around at the corpses littering the road. At Torvin’s body, face frozen in surprise, blood still pooling beneath him. At the other soldiers—men I knew, men I’d treated, men who would have let their sergeant carve me apart for the crime of saving lives that didn’t look like theirs.
Ten gold marks. Dead or alive.
I meet the orc captain’s gaze. Find nothing there but grim patience. Other orcs are carrying the orc I stitched up ahead of us. I don’t know where they are going with him.
“I don’t even know your name,” I say.
“Blorjorn.” He tugs the chain once, not hard. “Blorjorn Vezrik. Captain of the Blackbone War band.”
“And I’m supposed to just—trust you? Walk into an orc camp, let you keep me chained like livestock—”
“Trust has nothing to do with it.” He starts walking again. This time, I don’t fight. “You have two choices, healer. Come with me, or die on this road. The third option—where you go free and live happily—doesn’t exist anymore.”
The chain clinks between us. The sun sinks lower, painting the Bloodscar Plains in shades of blood and fire.
I follow.
Because he’s right. The only home I’ve ever known just tried to kill me, and the only person willing to keep me alive is an orc warlord who thinks he owns me.
Marta’s voice echoes in my head, dry and practical as ever. You learn to save them or you learn to live with the ghosts.
She never mentioned what happens when saving them chains you to a monster.
The orc captain—Blorjorn—moves through the fading light, and I stumble after him, my wrist cold beneath the iron, my pulse pounding a rhythm of terror and fury and something else I refuse to name.
Ahead, the silhouettes of more orcs emerge from the grass. His war band. My new captors.
My new keepers.
The chain clinks with every step, a sound I’m going to learn to hate.
The sun dies over the plains. Somewhere behind us, the carrion birds finally descend on the bodies.
And I walk into the dark, following an orc captain I’ve known for all of five minutes, because the alternative is bleeding out in the dirt while my own people cheer.
Some choice.
But it’s the only one I’ve got.