Chapter 2 Blorjorn #2
It’s pulsing now. I’m not sure why.
Approaching footsteps pull me from my thoughts. Scout’s gait—Marek, from the distinctive limp he earned at the Battle of Thornhollow. He moves fast, faster than he should with that old injury, and my hand drifts to the axes at my belt before I consciously decide to reach for them.
“Captain,” Marek drops to one knee, breathing hard, “news from the eastern ridge. Human patrol, two dozen strong, with trackers.”
“How far?”
“Half a day’s ride. Maybe less if they push through the night.
” His gaze flicks toward the healer’s tent.
“They’re hunting the woman. I got close enough to hear them talking.
There’s a bounty—signed by Commander Hadrin himself.
They’re using blood magic to track her. Sigil brands.
The kind that follow a person’s life-signature wherever they go. ”
My teeth clench.
Blood magic. Sigil brands. I know what those are—nasty pieces of sorcery that the humans developed specifically to hunt orc and escaped prisoners. They can track their target across any distance, through any disguise, until the target dies or the brand is destroyed.
Which means it doesn’t matter where she runs. They’ll find her.
Which means they’ll find us.
“The sergeant who was tracking her,” I keep my voice level, “I killed him on the corpse road. Him and his squad.”
“He wasn’t alone.” Marek’s expression is grim. “These trackers are his reinforcements. They found the bodies. They know she’s with orcs now.” A pause. “They’re calling it a kidnapping. Saying we abducted her by force.”
A bark of laughter escapes me, humorless and harsh. “Of course, they are.”
The warriors around the fire have gone silent, listening. Their eyes are on me—waiting for orders, waiting for a plan. That’s what a captain does. Solves problems. Makes decisions. Keeps his people alive.
The human woman just became a much larger problem than I anticipated.
I push to my feet. “Double the night watch. I want scouts on every approach within a mile of camp. Anyone sees anything—human, orc, or otherwise—I hear about it immediately.”
The warriors scatter to obey. Marek lingers.
“Captain,” He keeps his voice low, “the easiest solution would be to give her up. Leave her on the road for them to find. The trackers would stop hunting, and we could—”
“No.”
The word comes out harder than I intended. Marek blinks, taken aback.
“She saved Grothak.” I force my voice to steady. “The debt is blood-bound. I don’t abandon people I owe, Marek. Not even humans.”
A long pause. Then Marek nods, once, and melts into the darkness to carry out my orders.
I stand alone by the fire, staring into the flames, and wonder what the hell I’m doing.
I find her outside the healer’s tent, scrubbing blood from her hands with a rag that’s more red than white.
The moonlight catches on her face—the sharp angles, the determined set of her jaw, the scar that traces from ear to chin. She looks exhausted. Dark circles under her eyes, shoulders slumped with fatigue. But her hands are steady. A healer’s hands, trained to work through any condition.
She doesn’t look up when I approach. “He’s stable. The fever broke an hour ago. Barring infection, he should wake by morning.”
“Good.”
Silence stretches between us. She keeps scrubbing at her hands, working the blood from under her fingernails with single-minded focus. I should tell her about the trackers. About the blood magic. About the army hunting her with every weapon they have.
Instead, I watch her work, and I think about the way she moved on the corpse road. The way she knelt in orc blood without flinching, stitched alien flesh with the same care she’d give her own kind. No hesitation. No disgust.
Life is life. She said it like it was simple. Like it was obvious. Like centuries of war and hatred meant nothing compared to a single heartbeat.
“You’re staring.” Her voice cuts through my thoughts. “If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, I need sleep.”
“There are trackers coming.” No point softening it. “Human soldiers using blood magic. They’ll reach us by tomorrow, maybe sooner.”
Her hands still. For a moment, she doesn’t move at all. Then she lets out a breath, slow and controlled, and tosses the bloody rag aside.
“I knew they would.” Her voice is flat. “Hadrin doesn’t give up. Once he decides someone needs to be punished, he hunts them until they’re dead or he is.” She pauses. “He won’t die.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him. Everyone in the Eastern Provinces knows of Commander Hadrin Rathmore.” She finally looks at me, and something in her expression makes my chest constrict.
Not fear. Not anger. Just... weariness. Bone-deep exhaustion that has nothing to do with one sleepless night.
“He lost his family to orcs. Thirty years ago. Now he wants every orc dead, and anyone who helps them.”
“Including you.”
“Especially me.” She pushes to her feet, swaying slightly.
“I’m the symbol of everything he hates. Proof that not all humans see your kind as monsters.
” A bitter smile twists her mouth. “He’ll make an example of me.
Something public. Something painful. A warning to anyone else who might think about showing mercy to the enemy. ”
I should stay silent. Should maintain the distance between us—captor and captive, orc and human, two people thrown together by circumstance and debt. Getting involved in her problems beyond what honor demands is foolish. Dangerous.
“I won’t let that happen.”
The words come out before I can stop them. She stares at me, surprise flickering in those shifting eyes.
“Why?” She takes a step closer. Close enough that I can smell her—blood and herbs and something underneath that’s just her, warm and human and strangely appealing. “You don’t owe me anything. I saved Grothak. You don’t have a debt to repay.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Then explain how it works.” Another step.
She’s inside my reach now, close enough to touch, close enough to kill if I wanted.
She doesn’t seem to care. “Explain why you chained me, dragged me into your camp, and now you’re saying you’ll protect me from an army.
Because from where I’m standing, none of this makes sense. ”
I look down at her. Small, fierce, utterly unafraid despite every reason she has to be terrified. The moonlight silvers her dark curls, catches on the scar along her jaw. Up close, I can see the pulse fluttering in her throat. Fast. Too fast.
Not entirely unafraid, then. Just too stubborn to show it.
“You saved one of mine.” I keep my voice low, aware of the ears in every tent, the eyes watching from the shadows. “That makes you part of this war band until the debt is settled. I protect what’s mine.”
“I’m not yours.”
“No.” I hold her gaze. “But you’re under my protection. And that means Hadrin will have to go through me to get to you.”
Something shifts in her expression. The anger doesn’t fade, but something else joins it—confusion, maybe. Or recognition. Like she’s seeing something in me she didn’t expect to find.
She opens her mouth to respond.
The war horn shatters the night.
I’m moving before the echo fades.
Grief and Reckoning sing free of my belt, the familiar weight settling into my palms. The camp explodes into motion around me—warriors scrambling for weapons, war-wolves howling against their chains, the thunder of hooves from the horse line as the animals scent danger.
Dust clouds on the eastern ridge. Riders. Dozens of them, silhouetted against the dying moon.
Wrong timing. Wrong direction. The human trackers should still be half a day out.
Then I see the banner.
Skull trophies on black cloth. The mark of the Corpse Riders—marauders, renegades, mixed humans and orcs who’ve abandoned their own sides to prey on anyone weaker. They raid supply lines, slaughter survivors, and leave nothing but bones in their wake.
Not Hadrin’s men. Worse.
“Marauders!” I roar the word across camp, voice carrying over the chaos. “Defensive positions! Protect the wounded!”
The war band responds, discipline overriding panic. Shields lock together. Spears bristle outward. Archers nock arrows with steady hands.
And the arrows start falling.
Shafts hiss through the air, thudding into canvas, into dirt, into flesh. Someone screams. A horse goes down thrashing. Fire arrows trace burning arcs against the darkness, landing in the tents, the supply wagons, anything that will catch.
The human woman.
I spin, scanning the chaos for her. She’s where I left her—standing frozen outside the healer’s tent, staring at the approaching riders with something between terror and calculation on her face.
An arrow buries itself in the ground three inches from her foot.
I move.
The chain is still looped at my belt. I grab her wrist as I reach her, locking the manacle back into place in a single motion. She gasps—surprise, outrage, it doesn’t matter. The chain pulls taut between us as I drag her behind me, putting my body between her and the rain of arrows.
“What are you—”
“Stay close or die.” I cut her off, voice hard. “These aren’t soldiers. They don’t take prisoners.”
An arrow whines past my ear. I deflect another with the flat of Reckoning’s blade, the impact jarring up my arm. The marauders are closing fast, their screams cutting through the night—wordless howls of bloodlust, the sound of creatures who’ve abandoned everything except the hunger for violence.
I haul the human toward the center of camp, where the defensive formation is tightest, where the shield wall might hold long enough for the archers to thin the attackers’ numbers. The chain clinks with every step. She stumbles to keep pace, her free hand gripping my arm for balance.
Her touch burns against my skin. I ignore it. Focus on the fight. Focus on keeping us both alive.
The first marauders hit the shield wall with a crash of metal and fury. I shove the human behind a supply wagon, crouch beside her, axes ready.
“Stay here.” I lock my gaze with hers. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound. I’ll come back for you.”
“Blorjorn—”
“Stay.”
I don’t wait for her answer. The chain falls from my wrist as I unlock my end, leaving her tethered to the wagon wheel. Then I’m running, axes raised, plunging into the chaos of the battle.
And somewhere behind me, chained to a wagon wheel, the human woman watches.
Let her see what I am. The thought cuts through the battle-fury. She needs to understand exactly what kind of monster she’s bound herself to.
Maybe then she’ll stop looking at me like I’m something other than a weapon.
Maybe then I’ll stop wanting her to.