The Orc Warrioress at the Elf Lord's Court

1

GATHREN AP NALRAG was making this up as she went along.

However, it was going pretty well thus far if she did say so herself.

“In the wake of the High King’s death,” she was saying, “you’ll send word to my father that you have me.

This way, you can threaten my safety and control my father’s attack on the capital city.

You’ll be able to stop wholesale destruction by the orc armies. ”

Gathren was the only orc in a room full of elves, high ranking Valaedor elves at that, one of which was the son of an envivtain. The room was a sitting room, the walls light-colored, a wide window letting in the afternoon light over the clean lines of the understated furniture where they all sat.

“Well, someone must send word,” said one of the elves, a man named Marthlis. It was his house and his sitting room where they were all gathered, scheming about how to assassinate the High King of Lothnehil. “But I don’t know who that should be. Who can communicate with the orcs?”

“Perhaps we ought not have sent off that other one, the orc commander,” said the son of the envivtain, whose name was Iahir.

He had light blond hair cut to hit at his cheekbones.

It fell over his pretty, elfin features.

He was smoking a silver pipe. He also kept looking at Gathren in a way that she didn’t really like, a leering sort of way, his gaze lingering too long on her curves.

Perhaps she ought to be used to it by now, because she was often one of the few women in groups of mostly men, and men had a tendency to gape at her, no matter how tightly she bound her ample breasts against her chest. Being used to a thing, in any case, did not make it palatable.

“No, you would not have found that one easy to work with,” said Gathren, who had used the orc commander, Dathor, to get into this room, and then cut him out of everything. She worked better alone. “It will be much easier to simply deal with me.”

“You have volunteered to be a hostage,” said Iahir. “We cannot use you to communicate with the orcs. You have to be held captive, which means that you cannot leave. You do understand what it means to be a hostage?” He raised his blond eyebrows at her, his voice patronizing.

She lifted her chin at him. “I know you elves labor under the surety that we orcs are all incredibly stupid, and I find that assumption serves me rather well much of the time, so I suppose I shan’t disabuse you of it.

Yes, indeed, I have come to volunteer to be a hostage, but I have no idea what a hostage is. ”

Iahir smirked. “Have I mentioned that I like her?”

“Liking her or not, the problem has not been dealt with,” said Marthlis. “How do we communicate with the orcs?”

“I can tell you where to take a letter to get it to my father,” she said, “who to bring it to. That is no worry.”

She actually couldn’t.

She had made this hostage business up in the moment. It had not been her plan, not exactly. Her plan had been only to get close enough to assassinate the High King, and she recognized that the elves were not going to give her that access for nothing.

She would have to give them something in return.

When she and Dathor had come here in the first place, they had thought to trade in information—they would tell the elves when the orc army was coming and in return, the elves would get them close to the High King, who these elves opposed.

These elves were revolutionaries. The orcs were attacking the elves for vengeance, primarily, but they were sort of revolutionaries, too, in a way. It seemed they could work together.

But the information angle was not enough, and she could see that. So, she had told the elves they could hold her hostage, and that her presence here would be enough to sway the orc High Chieftain, her father.

It was a lie.

Well, a lie insofar as that her presence would sway the High Chieftain.

He was her father, but he paid her no mind, and he barely knew she existed.

He had sown her in her mother’s belly years ago and never had any contact with her again, not until Gathren had made her way to Arzakh and presented herself to him.

Eventually, they’d figure out she had been lying. She knew that. She needed that to be after the High King was dead.

“Right, then,” said Marthlis. “Who?”

“First,” she said, “I need to be assured that we can actually get close to the High King.”

“I am in his personal guard,” said Iahir. “As I have said, I am close enough to him. I guard him while he sleeps, sweep the room hourly as he snores in his bed. I can kill him any time we want.”

“Well, when are you going to do it?” she said. She did not need to be the person who killed the High King, whose name was Findas, herself. She was happy enough to let Iahir do it, but she wanted it done soon.

“That is precisely what we are trying to determine,” said Marthlis. “But this is not so easy as simply stabbing him in his sleep.”

“It really is,” said Iahir. “I have volunteered for it. We meet often. Every time we meet, I say, I can do it whenever we wish, any time at all, and it’s never the right time.” He puffed on his silver pipe, giving Gathren a look that seemed to indicate he thought they were on the same side.

She wanted to glare at him, but she forced herself not to. She needed to keep these men’s favor, after all.

“I thought we must time it with the invasion of the orc forces,” said another of the elves in the room, one whose name Gathren had not gotten. “Is that not what the other one said?”

“Our forces are coming soon,” said Gathren.

“There’s no reason to delay. But I must be there, and I must see that it has happened.

Once I have seen Findas’s body myself, then I will relinquish myself as hostage and tell you how to contact my father.

” There, she thought, that’s quite a good plan.

I just came up with it now, but I feel as if it’s as brilliant as if I’d been planning it for weeks.

She was not really good at planning things for weeks, she had to admit. What she was good at was seeing an opportunity and seizing it. She acted quickly and decisively, and it had served her well for much of her life.

“Your demands keep changing,” muttered Marthlis to Gathren. “But then, what can we expect, dealing with orcs?”

Gathren gave him a sour look.

“That’s impossible, anyway,” said Iahir. “To see his body, you would have to be brought into the palace. There are no orcs in the palace. None. You would stand out rather badly.”

She grimaced, realizing this was likely true. High King Findas hated orcs, thought them vermin, had tracts made up about how he was purging the land of them as if they were an illness, and he didn’t want orcs anywhere, not even as servants.

“You could bring her in,” said Marthlis. “Of course, it wouldn’t do to have her in there and then immediately—” He snapped his fingers. “Findas dies. You’d have to bring her in a few weeks before.”

“How?” said Iahir. “There are no orcs, I tell you. The High King is insistent on elvish purity, even amongst the servants.”

“I seem to remember,” said Marthlis, looking Iahir over with a faint sneer, “you had a dwarf whore in your quarters.”

Iahir puffed on his pipe and looked at Gathren, smiling. “That could work.”

Gathren grimaced again. Should she protest, or would that mean all of the men in the room looked straight at her bosom? “I must sleep in your quarters?”

“There’s another room,” said Iahir. “It’s really a wife’s room, but I have no wife, and so, I did have a lovely dwarf companion there for nearly six months. You could stay there, and the High King would hate it. That alone would make it worth it.”

“If you blatantly antagonize him, won’t that mean it’s harder for you to get close enough to kill him?” said Gathren.

“Oh, I have been blatantly antagonizing him for the past six years,” said Iahir, leaning back in his chair.

“Trying to get the attention of your father is what you’ve been doing,” said Marthlis.

“You keep saying that,” said Iahir, “but I assure you, there is no getting my father’s attention. That is not why I’m doing this.”

“You, my lord, only do things to amuse yourself,” said Marthlis. “You care about no one and nothing, and you seem to take a certain perverse joy in doing things that repulse others, and because of your high status, no one can stop you—”

“All right, we’ve devolved into this again,” interrupted Iahir, getting up from where he sat.

“This is typical, too,” he told Gathren.

“I come to these meetings, and we all talk a lot and then ultimately decide to do nothing. The other thing the rest of them do is spend a vast amount of time finding fault with me.” He looked around at the other elves.

“You all need me, and you all resent that fact. But do get in touch with me if you ever want to actually overthrow the government instead of just talking about it.” He leaned over to dump his pipe into a little ashtray in the midst of the table and then started for the door.

“Wait,” called Marthlis, ire in his tone.

Iahir stopped in the doorway. He was tall and lithe and golden, the sunlight from the window catching him there.

He practically glistened. Gathren had not interacted much with the fair elves here in the south.

The beauty of this man… it stole her breath.

He turned, a smile playing at his lips. “What?”

“Take the orc princess,” said Marthlis, gesturing to Gathren.

“I’m not a princess,” she said.

“She can’t stay here,” said Marthlis. “I have nowhere to keep an orc hostage.”

“How long am I housing her?” said Iahir.

“Two weeks,” said Marthlis, and he let out a noisy breath as if it cost him to say this. “We will kill the High King in two weeks.”