3
NOW, IN THE north tower, Aerhril was thrown down on the cold stone floor of an empty room. There was nothing in here, just a circular room with wide open windows that overlooked the countryside.
The orcs who had been holding her arms had been talking over her on the way up here, but in their own orc language, which was all guttural sounds. She didn’t understand any of it.
She was cold. The windows up here didn’t have glass in them. Her dress was in tatters, and much of her skin was bare, and she hugged herself and backed into a wall and and then—
Her gaze got snagged on a sight outside of the window.
It was rows and rows of tents being set up in a nearby field. She gasped and went to the window, clutching it and leaning forward.
The orc army.
So many of them.
This was a real invasion, then.
The orcs behind her continued to talk to each other, but she didn’t turn around until she heard his voice.
He did not speak the orc language, so she understood him.
“I can hear you, you know,” he said. “And I am your commander, so whatever irregularities you’re observing, you will still follow my orders.”
“Sir,” said one of the orcs, “you know this place.”
“Yes,” he said. “I grew up here.”
“You concealed this from—”
“The high commander was aware,” he cut in. “Back downstairs now. Help the rest of the brigade with the bodies.”
She watched as the other orcs filtered around him, through the door, leaving him there alone to stare at her.
“Close the door,” he said to the retreating orcs.
The door banged closed, leaving them alone.
She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to break down in tears, to throw herself into his arms, to ask him how he could do this to her?
But she still remembered their last interaction, and how very, very angry he’d been with her.
He was still angry, obviously.
He stepped into the room. “They are all talking about the way I was with you, with Celedin, and they have never much liked the idea of being led by a half-elf.”
Celedin was dead.
She remembered that with an awful jolt.
Yes, she could see that Dathor’s hands were bloody. His uniform was probably spattered with blood, too, but the material was too dark for it to show. It was dark blue with thin gold piping stitched around the collar and the sleeves.
“You killed Celedin,” she said, and after all these years, this was the first thing she said to him?
He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t sound grateful. I thought you’d be pleased to be rid of him.”
She let out a disbelieving laugh that sounded more like a sob and then she turned and looked out the window at the orc army.
“You were supposed to marry him years ago,” said Dathor. “I thought I’d come back to find you with a brat of his attached to your breast, one clinging to your skirts, and yet, no, your wedding day, delayed all this time. Were you waiting for me?”
She clenched her hands into fists. She thought about hurling herself at him, beating her ineffectual hands against his massive chest. But what was the point? “No.”
“I didn’t come back for you.”
“Clearly,” she said. “Speaking of brats, how old is yours?” She looked over her shoulder at him. “How does the mother of your child feel about all this? Did she know you were coming to do this to me?”
His voice was choked. “Nathre died.”
“Oh,” she said. “And the baby…?”
“Died in her,” he said.
She looked back out of the window. “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry, actually, and you have no idea how sorry. I never wanted anything like this to have happened.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I suppose you don’t believe me. I suppose you blame me.”
“It is actually your fault,” he said.
Her shoulders shook. Was she laughing or sobbing? “Well, you have certainly taught me my lesson, Dathor. Yes, that punishment quite fit the crime.”
“It wasn’t personal. It’s strategy,” he said. “It’s what we’re doing at all of the keeps here in the Silvarenna—”
“So, it is an invasion,” she said. “There was a woman who came here, weeks ago. She had a small babe. She said there were orcs at Falls Keep, but the orcs let her go. She said they were killing everyone and raping all the women—”
“Not all the women. One token woman, the highest ranked elf woman in the place,” he said. “I knew it would be you, and when I knew we would come here, I thought you’d rather it be me than someone else.”
She turned from the window to look at him. “Oh, this was mercy? I see.” She was very sarcastic.
“I could not turn them off it, off the Peak,” he said. “If I had been too eager for them to leave it alone, they would have suspected that I was not loyal.”
“But you are loyal,” she said.
He swallowed, searching her gaze. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I am loyal to the orc cause.”
“You’re a commander in their army.” She gestured to him. “How long have you even been there? Six years? How you have risen.”
“You can’t stay here in this room, alone,” he said.
“But I thought you would want time, I suppose. We are keeping all the women survivors in a room in the bottom of the south tower. I’ll take you there, but we can go by a circuitous route, so that you can go by your chambers, change your torn dress, get yourself together. ”
She let out another disbelieving laugh. “Am I supposed to thank you for this?”
“Members of my brigade are whispering amongst themselves about it. I’m not behaving the way a commander is supposed to behave. I’m not supposed to have ordered you off to a room by yourself. I’m not supposed to have come here and spoken to you alone. I’m taking risks for you.”
“You are unbelievable,” she said, aghast. “You just raped me in front of a crowd.”
“Like I said, it had to be done,” he said. “And it could have been worse.”
“You’re not even sorry.”
“I am,” he said, lowering his gaze, his voice going scoured. “I’m very sorry. It’s obviously not how I wanted it between us.”
“There is nothing between us now,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper.
“Well, that is not true,” he said. “There will always be something between us.”
She turned back to the window. So many of them, a whole army of them.
“We don’t have time, Aerhril,” he murmured. “Let’s go.”
She shook her head. “They won’t all stay. They have taken Foxglove Peak, but the rest of the army will go on and do this somewhere else, like at Falls Keep. That is what the woman with the small babe said.”
“Really, that woman should not have gotten away.”
She turned to look at him in horror. “What do you mean by that?”
“Aerhril, if you do not come with me willingly, I will take you out of this room by force. I do not have to let you change out of your torn dress or give you several moments locked away alone in your bedchamber. I do not have to do any of those things, and if you do not wish them, then I will not do them.”
“I hate you,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was going to happen one way or the other. I could not prevent it.”
She stalked across the room to the door. “You used to protect me.”
“I protected you now,” he said.
She was close to him now, and she looked up into his face. “Somewhere along the line, though, you wanted me for your pleasure more than you wanted me safe.”
“That’s not—I didn’t enjoy that.”
She opened the door and went walking down the hallway.
He caught her and seized her arm. “This way. No one will see us going down the back steps.”
AERHRIL FOUND IT jarring to go back into her bedchamber after all of this.
She had left things lying out, her combs from tidying her hair, the pot she’d used to blacken her eyelashes and make them visible because her hair was so fair, and all of it reminded her of this morning, when she thought the worst thing that was going to happen to her that day was that she would be married to Celedin.
Celedin is dead, she thought again.
Dathor was outside the door.
“You know I can’t take this dress off by myself!” she called out to him.
The door banged open. “You want me to undress you?” he sneered at her. “Happy to help.”
“I hate you,” she said again, giving him her back. “Unbutton me.”
His thick orc fingers were deft as they moved quickly down the back of her dress.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why are they doing this?”
“That was vague, little fair elf. Why is who doing what?”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “Why are the orcs invading?”
“Truly? That’s a question?”
“Well, I know that High King Findas is awful, of course.” She did. She had seen the official tracts printed up by the palace, the terrible little drawings of the orc caricatures, the long essays about how the country of Lothnehil needed to be purified and to go back to the old ways.
The old ways meant just elves, no orcs.
The orcs were to be sent back to their own country, across the Rathog Pass, and Lothnehil was to be purged of them. The language used in the tracts was always that the orcs were a blight or a disease or that they were vermin or insects or things of that nature.
She knew.
It was ugly.
“I know that orcs in Lothnehil hate it, but what do the orcs in Arzakh care? Are they simply angry that more of their own people are coming across the pass? Is the orc country becoming overpopulated? Why invade?”
The buttons were undone. She moved out of his reach, holding the bodice of her dress against her corset.
“Oh, are you serious?” he said. “Not going to let me see your underthings? I wouldn’t think that matters now.”
“It’s my dignity, you fiend,” she said, and she hurled herself away from him into her closet and shut the door on him.
“Arzakh is not a very nice place to live,” said Dathor. “Lots of eruptions of fire out of the ground, earthquakes, things of that nature. The orcs want the better lands of Lothnehil for themselves, and they hate elves and want to make them suffer. So, invasion.”
She let her dress fall and began to work on the laces of her corset, which laced up the front. She would put this back on, but she wanted the layer beneath it, her shift, the fabric directly against her skin, which had absorbed her terrified sweat, off her. She needed it off. Now.
“Also,” said Dathor, “I suppose it’s about trade.”