CHAPTER 3 — Where’s the Harm ?
STEPHANIE
I’m escorted to a bedroom. Roarg’s, I’m told, although I may as well consider it my own for the next three nights until my Smekbryll ends.
Smekbryll: the charming three-day honeymoon period where a new wife has the privilege of sleeping in her husband’s bed.
Not that it sounds like we’ll be doing much sleeping.
SHUDDER.
After that, I’ll get my own room, where Roarg will visit me probably nightly until my sisterwives can pick up the wifely duty slack.
Introduction to Roarg’s room over, it’s into Roarg’s bathroom I’m dragged (which is also built in a lovely Zakopane style, the room mouthwateringly constructed of insanely curved timbers), I’m stripped, then hauled over the chilly stone floor to a copper basin big enough to bathe an elephant calf.
The basin is filled partially with steaming water heated over the kitchen fire, and I’m dunked and scrubbed and perfumed with flower petal-scented water.
I’m numb as I’m belted into a pumpkin spice hangerok over an underdress dyed the color of embers that, if I weren’t working so hard to wish myself home, I might notice looks pretty smashing.
And then I’m shoved back into the room adjacent to the bathroom—Roarg’s room, which is fabulously cruck-framed with three symmetrical A-blades swooping down from the roof to the ground—and here I’m left alone.
Oil lamps provide light, plus a fat candle in the corner.
The room and bedcovers smell like flowers piled on pine and cedar shavings, care of my effect on the mostly raw wood decor.
The only real furniture so to speak, besides some nightstands, is a real focal point piece: a gargantuan four-poster bed built for an Orc man.
The four posts were once trees that were sliced down the middle, or riven, and sliced again.
The lengthwise boards that connect the posts are cut in the same fashion, giving the whole thing a one-of-a-kind agrestic look.
The bed’s frame is the sturdiest construction I’ve ever seen, with thick wood planks fitted together tongue-and-groove style, accented with metal purely for aesthetics. Giant rope knots are lashed tightly along the plank boards; it’s a rope-framed bed.
I stare at it for a long time.
The Orc women bring me supper, but I can only pick at it. And not only because it’s the ugly (and hideously smelly) fish. I’m just not hungry. Contemplating what’s about to happen—having the Orc of the manor come home to have his way with you—can do that to a person.
Dread isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel as I wait, periodically touching my tattooed face, wondering if I should slip out the window and take my chances in the woods in an unfamiliar world with only my jewelry as currency…
unless I encounter someone who insists on a less savory form of payment for…
What? What can I even ask strangers to do for me? I want to ask someone to take me home, but if I don’t know how I got here, how the heck is anyone going to be able to send me back?
I ponder this less than stellar predicament as I sit cross-legged on a stranger’s bed, trying to psych myself up for what’s probably about to happen to me.
But I’m still not prepared when a low but thunderous voice reverberates outside the door.
“You badger me to brush my teeth the moment I finish my supper—and now you’re sending me to my room?
What surprise have my precious wives arranged for me? ”
I tense all over.
And not just because the male voice standing outside my only escape route is probably going to view me as his surprise. No, I’m extra tense because music just began thumping softly in the room…
And it’s freakishly similar to the percussive drumbeats that drew me and Esther and Lisa to the game booth that got me here.
Upsettingly? This time, the drumbeats give a distinct boss level vibe.
This can’t be good.
“Where is it coming from?” I intone quietly enough only I can hear me. And my gaze darts along the walls, looking for speakers of some kind.
I find nothing. And then the drumming stops dead.
Spare words are exchanged between wives and their confused husband before the brass doorknob my eyes are glued to is turning, and I grab for my tankard of what the Orc women said should ‘settle my nerves.’ I’ve been sipping from it since they gave it to me, but now I gulp it because my throat is so dry it feels like it may as well be glued shut.
The door swings open, and a giant male Orc stops dead in the doorway, staring at me in shock…
And pleasure suffuses his strong face. “Happy birthed day to me,” he mutters in an awed rumble, looking me up and down.
And my good gah—he’s tall. So tall. And he. Is. HUGE.
He turns, facing a grinning Namak?ga, Joktepitha, and even a smiling Ulda, and he declares, “I have been so blessed since the day I married each of you. You know how to treat an Orc.”
“Enjoy,” Namak?ga purrs at him.
Joktepitha, holding her son to her chest, waves at me. “You enjoy too!”
“Yes. Don’t disappoint us, girl,” Ulda adds, patting Opkug’s little back.
Roarg gives them all a huge grin and shuts the door, turning back to me, his two big tusks all my eyes can handle focusing on for a second.
I force my gaze to lower down his Brobdingnagian frame.
His upper arms are carved tree trunks. His forearms are just as impressively muscled—and veined.
His skin is the color of dill relish, but it doesn’t diminish the impressiveness of his build in any way.
His wrists are covered with wide leather bracers, looking very manly, fitted to his hefty bones with thick leather laces and big silver snaps.
His shirt is a pullover, soft linen and the same shade as willow bark.
A wide leather belt with straps and some gear hanging from one side of it is tied in a Celtic-style knot at his waist. And his trousers, a sturdy fabric the gray-cobalt color of faded blueberry staining, sit on narrow hips.
His feet aren’t bare. They’re hugged by soft-looking dark wool socks. The stitching is uneven; I think they’re hand-darned.
I don’t know why my eyes are drawn to them, but they are.
And then the massive Orc takes a step toward me, and my reaction is that of a panicked prey animal: my heart leaps out of my chest, my blood starts galloping through my veins, and I launch myself off the bed to get away from him—or I try, but my feet are frozen with fear, keeping my bottom half rooted in place.
Which means I fall to the bed on my back like a terrified hamster.
Which is absolutely the worst place to be when your new-husband-by-force enters the bedroom, probably with the idea that you’re going to ‘pleasure him with your strangeness until morning.’
(That Ulda. She has a way with words, doesn’t she?)
The tremendously-sized male Orc looms above me. “What ails thee, my new love?”
I chance a glance up at his face—and find him frowning.
I scramble until I’m up on my hands and knees, then I skitter to the side of the bed farthest from where he’s standing.
I even put a post between us. As safety measures go, it’s worse than mediocre—it’s downright ineffectual—but it’s all I have.
Roarg watches me with confusion. Voice careful, he introduces himself. “I, Roarg Hammerfist—”
His voice is rich, deep, and full. His eyes are the color of sea-soaked sand dollars, and I’m distracted by the earnestness in them as he continues, “—of the Ogemaw kingdom, take thee to wed… what is your name?”
My eyes must be bulging out of my head. Are these Orc wedding vows?! My lungs shrink to the size of chickpeas.
Roarg’s brows near each other; he’s waiting for me to supply my name.
I refuse, because I can’t. I physically cannot talk—my throat has swollen shut with disbelief or shock or both.
A rasping sound draws my eyes to his chin, which he’s absently scratching; he has beard stubble. It’s dark and thick on the lower half of his face. Then Roarg’s big hands go to his belt—and I twitch hard, ready to climb the wall and stick to the ceiling.
I can’t look away as he loosens the leather knot, and I flinch when he fists the rig, peeling it off and coiling it up in one of his palms.
Seeming to study me, he slowly stretches out his arm and sets the belt on a nightstand with a heavy clank, whatever tools hanging from the thing coming to rest against each other with metallic thunks. “I think,” he says softly, “I have some questions.”
His hand then goes behind his head, to the shoulders of his linen shirt, and even terrified, something in me appreciates the show as he tugs it sexily up and over his head.
I experience the weirdest, most inexplicable tingle at the sight.
“Is your family forcing you to wed me?” he asks, his gaze on the shirt he’s taking the time to fold between his large hands.
No, but yours is. “No.”
The set of his shoulders relaxes. My eyes snag on a tattoo that ripples along the muscle of his upper arm. I don’t know what the tattoo is supposed to be; it’s some kind of three-part crest, a design that nicely—very nicely—complements the shape of his ridiculously-sized deltoid.
He sets his shirt on a long dresser. His scent wafts to me, root beer, burnt metal, and man. He removes his bracers, revealing impressively veined arms. When his hands move to loosen the laces on his trousers, my gaze skitters away.
“What’s your name?” Roarg asks again.
“I’m—Stephanie,” I choke out.
“Mmm. A beautiful name befitting an exotic woman of beauty. I wonder how you came to be here, Stephanie.”
I can’t even answer him.
He nods like he knows I’m scared, and that’s fine, he’s going to roll with it. “Stephanie, you have no need to fear me. I’ll be gentle with you, and I vow to care for you in all the ways a man should care for his wife—”
His FOURTH wife on rotation!
“—I will become your beloved, and you will be mine. I will provide for all your needs, supplying you with everything in my power, withholding no affection.”
My chest tightens at his words.