Epilogue
GATHREN GRIPPED HER sword and pressed her back into Iahir, keeping her eyes on the goblins who were closing in on the two of them. There had to be at least twelve of them.
“You take those ten, and I’ll get the other two,” said Iahir, and she could hear he was swinging his blade.
“Always the way with you, my lord,” she gasped. “Leaving most of the work to me.”
“I can’t help it. I’m so very, very delicate, as you know,” he said.
It was dark, which wasn’t helping when it came to fighting off goblins. The ship was there, off the coast, and they had to get to their boat to row out, but they couldn’t very well get there if the goblins were blocking their way, could they?
She thrust with her sword, getting one of the goblins in its shoulder and it shrieked.
The goblins chattered loudly in their goblin language, which neither she nor Iahir spoke.
That had made trade with these creatures…
challenging, but they had not expected a double-cross like this, where the goblins were willing to fight them and take back the gold they’d paid for the spices she and Iahir had brought.
Iahir wasn’t touching her, suddenly. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see he had swooped out, dancing gracefully as his blade snicked through the air. Three goblins fell. “There,” he said, “done more than my share, I think.”
She stabbed another goblin. “The next time you say we should trade with goblins—”
“Yes, yes, I know. This is all my fault,” he said, skewering another goblin himself.
She swung her sword in a wide circle, knocking down more of them. “It’s always your fault.”
“It’s lucky you find me so comely, I suppose, warrioress, or you’d leave me behind.”
“Lucky indeed,” she said, but it came out as a grunt, because she was stabbing another goblin.
Iahir thrust behind himself, sticking a goblin in the stomach. He pulled his sword out, swung it around and stabbed another.
She looked around, and there was nothing else coming out of the darkness. “That’s all of them?”
“Don’t jinx us, warrioress,” he said.
They put their backs to the shore and began to back towards their boat, holding out their swords.
“You held your own there,” she said.
“I like to think, under your tutorage, my swordplay is improving. But I’d be happy to have more sparring lessons, any time you’re amenable.”
She couldn’t help but smile. They were a very good team. “I do think you’re making some improvements, my lord.”
“Yes?”
“But you have quite a ways to go, of course.”
“Of course,” he said.
And they had made it to the boat. She jumped inside, getting the oars, he shoved off, waded through the water, and then climbed in with her.
There, in the distance, more goblins.
“Drag me to Nilhaem,” she breathed. “That was only the first of them. There must be fifty of them now.”
“Yes, we wouldn’t have stood a chance,” he said. “I promise we’ll never sell anything to goblins again.” He took up an oar.
“Well, we couldn’t have known,” she said, taking up another oar.
They began to row towards their ship.
The ship was named The Sweet Surprise, and they had not bought it only because of the name, but the name had seemed quite appropriate.
It had come outfitted with its own crew—mostly dwarves, though it wasn’t a dwarvish vessel but an elvish one, which was good, since a ship made for dwarves would not have been comfortable for either of them—they were too tall.
The crew had on it several orcs, however, a troll, and only one elf.
Its owner had been killed in the uprising, and the son who had inherited the thing wanted rid of it so that he could join his family in the country where they had fled to get away from the orcs.
His father had been a merchant, dealing spices, and they had seamlessly taken over his business, with the help of the crew.
It wasn’t as if the crew accepted their odd coupling immediately, but after Gathren threatened anyone who had anything negative to say with her dagger and Iahir said that he would throw them off the ship without back wages, everyone learned to keep their mouths shut.
And she would say now, two years on, that there was no prejudice amongst any of them.
Now, as the dwarves above them began to pull the ropes up on their little boat to lift them up onto the ship, it felt as if coming home to family.
“Those goblins give you trouble, cap’ns?” said Doin as they embarked onto the deck of ship. They were both called captain by the ship hands, since they were equally in charge of everything.
“They did, in fact,” said Iahir.
“Goblins is always trouble,” said Rimli, holding out his hand to help Gathren out of the rowboat.
“This is what I said,” said Gathren, shaking her head at Iahir.
“All right, all right,” said Iahir, spreading his hands. “We’ve established it was a bad idea to trade with goblins. Lesson learned. I admit I was wrong. This is the last time, however. If anyone wishes to punish me for this, do it now. In the future, I will deny I have done anything wrong.”
“Oh, I shall punish you for it, my lord,” she said. “I have a great deal of ideas in mind for how to teach you a lesson.”
“Oh, gods, cap’ns,” groaned Rimli. “Can the two of you not keep that sort of talk behind closed doors?”
“Swinging a sword always gets her a little worked up,” said Iahir.
“We’ll be in our cabin,” she said. “Don’t disturb us.”
“Hoist the anchor?” said Doin.
“Oh, yes, get as far away from this place as possible,” said Iahir. He reached back to take her hand.
She smiled at him.
“Shall we, warrioress?”
“We shall, my lord,” she said.
THE LAST TIME the two of them had been in Lothnehil, things had not been going too well.
There had been a treaty reached between the orcs and elves, and a government had been established that would have representatives from each of the races. This had been a triumph of both Marthlis and Larhil and some of the others, as Iahir understood it.
But it hadn’t been much of a triumph, because it had hardly lasted seven months before some Cirdan elf had come in with armies from the north, thrown them all out, and settled himself in the castle there, where he ruled—not as the High King, but as what was called the Prime Custodian.
The Prime Custodian of Lothnehil was, even now, engaged in some kind of war campaign to go and take over all the lands of the world for Lothnehil. Iahir had even heard that he might be calling himself an emperor these days.
But the good thing about this was that the Prime Custodian, or emperor as the case may be, was leading an army of mixed orcs and elves across the seas, two peoples fighting for the same country, and there was a certain kind of kinship amongst the races now, something that there hadn’t been before.
Of course, Iahir supposed it helped that half of the keeps in the north (and some in the south) were run by orc-elf couples, though they almost always went the other way—an elf woman and an orc man. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Now, he was fumbling around for a sheath for his cock, because they never did it without one anymore.
There had been an incident three months before. It had been his fault, obviously, because he was the one who was supposed to make sure he pulled out. He hadn’t.
Some part of him might have wanted to have gotten her with child, he thought, but it became quite clear, as they waited in breathless agony for her bleeding to come, that she was very sure that she never wanted a child, and the discussions they had about it brought him right around to her way of thinking about it.
Where did a child fit in their lives, really?
How would they raise a child on a ship? The child would have no other children to be with, no chance for schooling, and no real future.
For the child, the ship would be a sort of prison, and what would happen once the child was grown?
And furthermore, did they really want to be up doing feedings at all hours, and changing nappies and picking up every small object off the ship’s deck that a child could choke on?
He had gazed at her breasts for too long and thought about the feedings, and she had taken him by the chin and said that if she had to feed a child with these, they would not be for his pleasure anymore, nor would they be for her pleasure, they would simply be tools to accomplish a task, and he knew she was right, but…
but… well, she was right. The disadvantages of her being with child outweighed the advantages, and she was very intelligent about the entire thing, and he didn’t want anything about their lives to change.
They were both relieved when she bled.
Now, they always used the sheath.
“No,” she said, imperious. “You are not getting that cock of yours anywhere near my quim, not until you have entirely made up for this goblin fiasco.”
“Oh?” he said, smiling at her.
“Oh,” she said. “Use your mouth, my lord. And do a very good job, because I am in no mood for anything except appeasement at this juncture. I did not want to spend my evening stabbing goblins.”
“Yes, warrioress,” he said, his smile widening. “I would count myself privileged to lick you there.”
“Of course you would.”
“Shall I beg?” he teased.
“You do like it, don’t you?” she said. “You love applying your eager mouth to my wet cunt.”
“Please, warrioress,” he said in a guttural voice. “Please.”
She was tart and sweet there, her body making tiny tremors under the swirls of his tongue. He’d gotten much better at this, and it was true that he might like doing it to her more than she liked having it done. It was not the first time he’d begged to be allowed to put his mouth to her there.
But they had been together for some time now, and he knew her body quite well, and he teased her expertly until she burst on his tongue.
And then he did fumble with the sheath and slip into the hot, slick center of her and they were nose to nose, breathing together, looking into each other’s eyes, and he was happy.
He hadn’t known, before all this, that happiness like this could exist, happiness as vast as the ocean, happiness as deep as the sea. He had not ever imagined that his life could be so wonderful.
Someday soon, they would have to make a trip back again, to Lothnehil, to make sure their mothers were all right, but they would return here, back to their ship, back to this home for the both of them, where they could be together, and where they could sail away from the rest of the world.
Sometimes, the rest of the world simply took too long to catch up.
They had to make their own way.
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Thank you so much for reading!