1. The Captive #3
The man stumbled back with an “Oof!” and Tenithin was screaming, “Get them, get them!” Jarreth lunged off his cot to tackle the speaking one, and I watched him drive his elbow into Jarreth’s face with a crunch.
The guard with a sword pushed me to the side so he could stumble forwards and try to brain the first orc with the pommel.
The orc deflected the blow, the blade scoring red along his arm.
He was shouting in Orcish, and I heard a bang as the door to the guardhouse slammed against the frame.
He took the sword-guard down with a punch to the throat, drove Jarreth’s head back against the wall, and was turning towards that door. His eyes lit on me, like he thought I’d do something. Like he thought I could. “Apologies,” he said again. He took one step forward.
And he dropped like a stone.
Tenithin stood behind him, holding one of our brass candlesticks, blood sticky on the dull metal. “You,” he snarled at the guard, the one on one knee, holding his throat. “Get the other one!”
And that’s when I realized the second orc was gone.
There was a lot of blood, normal for a headwound. I helped Tenithin tie him— I was being very helpful today— and I pinched the wound’s edges together and hummed a melody I hoped didn’t sound like hatred. Tenithin needed him alive, and I needed someone in this half-forsaken town who’d be on my side.
They didn’t find the other orc.
It was evening when I made my way with my lighter basket towards the shell of a house that had been ours.
And it was evening when Todderick cornered me.
“You can drop this act where you hate me.” The town overseer’s tall, gangly son smirked down from above me, his arm against the midway-wall blocking the road beyond. I should not have taken this alleyway.
No. He’d have found me anyway. I scanned the street beyond him, mostly empty, only Mrs. Pritch with her chickens, averting her eyes.
This was not a good place to scream, but I could if I had to.
I would if I had to. “That's right,” he chuckled.
“You stay quiet and listen, like a good bird.” He leaned a little closer.
“I’m not marrying you.” I tightened my grip on the basket, like I could swing it. I had the passing thought that Father would be furious if I hurt this boy, but that was silly. Father was in the ground with his intestines piled on top of him. Jack Cooper would never be furious again.
“Marry me? Who said anything about marrying?”
He had, not two drunken weeks ago, but he leaned in, and I held my tongue.
“No,” he leered. “You're going to be very, very nice to me, because you need me, pet. Without your da here, there's no man in your life to keep you. And besides,” he gloated. There was liquor on his breath. “I'm the one who can stop you from being an orc bride.”
Curses, now I needed him to talk.
“That’s right.” His too-wide smile spread further.
“That’s why they’re keeping the orcs locked up instead of splitting ‘em open. My da heard from up north, they stopped the raids, all the raids, wrapped it up neat as a present, by offering the orcs human flesh.” His tongue lapped over his teeth.
“That’s the Orc way of making a peace treaty, don’t you know?
Open legs, shut case.” His breath crossed my skin, and I flinched.
He leaned back, still smiling, crowed, “So you’re going to be real nice, if you want better than Odelle. ”
I hated him. I hated him an unreasonable amount.
I wanted to slam my basket into his face, if it called me up before the tribunal, if it got me in stocks.
But I couldn't let emotion get the better of me.
You had to pull the usefulness from their bodies, or you were betraying others who'd need you.
“What does Odelle have to do with this?”
“Oh.” He cleaned his nails on the bottom of his tunic. “Someone recommended to the council that she’d make a fairly un-missed orc wife.”
My stomach fell out from under me.
I wouldn’t call Odelle my friend. I hadn’t had the time or the beating heart to call anyone my friend these last few years.
But even I had seen Odelle and John-the-baker’s-apprentice making eyes at each other across the square, the way their hands found each other at the back of the church.
John had nothing and wouldn’t for years, was still covering his forearms with shiny oven-scars working off his debt, but the two of them seemed so happy.
The whispers said they’d promised to be wed.
“This is because she brushed you off at the harvest dance.” I sounded calm.
He smirked.
“You wretched pig.”
His smile wiped away.
“I hope you die,” I spat. “I hope the orcs come back and put your head on a pike. I hope they eat your entrails while you watch.” I was shaking.
Some faces are ugly purely for the way they’re used. His twisted, so normal, and still the ugliest face I’d ever see. “You’ll want to change your tune. There are two orcs in there, aren’t there?”
Two orcs.
But there weren't.
I used my basket like a battering ram to break through to the street, swung back to see the surprise in his eyes. “You’re garbage, Todderick Marsen, and I’ll never have anything to do with you.”
“Be careful, Annora,” he shouted, as if he knew the whole street would pretend they couldn’t hear. “There’s no one looking after you anymore, you yellow-haired whore!”
I was shaking when I barred the door to the cold, sour little house, the smell of the blood I couldn’t scrub away still tanging on the air, the hearth gray and cold.
I was shaking as I realized I had to eat, as I forced down dry bread moistened with a little water and wrapped myself in every musty blanket left in the house because I had no kindling.
It made sense that people had forgotten me.
My da wasn’t the only man who’d died, in the orc raid.
And I wasn’t someone who asked for help.
God, when was the last time I talked to someone before Tenithin?
I’d kept to myself. I was hardly a loving neighbor bringing meals to the bereaved. It made sense, to be forgotten.
And I’d probably survive. I could probably make it.
I might even avoid Todderick. Mayhap the Overseer would have me wed to some old man of fifty and my life wouldn’t change at all, besides having to share his odious bed.
It would tie up loose ends for the town.
Maybe the overseer would do it just to get me away from his son. I’d probably survive.
I closed my eyes and thought about Odelle, all her hopes and pretty smiles, someone I hadn’t talked to since before my mum died and hadn’t had a spare moment to miss while I grieved everything else in my life. And I cried. For her, I could cry.
When I had finished, in the cold light of dawn, I decided.
I couldn't save myself. I couldn't be useful enough to be worth freedom. I never could. But I could save someone.
When the bell rang for the town to gather, I was ready. I took the long walk around to the church hall, looking at the wildflowers and grasses like I’d never see them again. The sky was blue.
“Welcome, people of Brackshire,” the Overseer was saying. “We have been offered a heartbreaking solution to the problem that has plagued our village, a way through the twisted minds of the orcs, to still the bloodlust in their shrunken hearts…”
I stood by the doors. Merrik— we used to play when we were children— the tanner’s boy, he tried to scoot to offer me a seat, but I shook my head and stayed by the door.
“Among their own kind, the orcs stop wars by a system of kidnapping and marriage.” Murmurs rose.
He held up his hands. “It has been relayed to me by a reliable source that bloodshed was stopped in some towns in the northern reaches in just this way: orcs were captured, weddings were officiated, and the people avoided more loss.”
“You’d bind our daughters to orcs?” a voice shouted.
The Overseer’s face was practiced in its sorrow. “My good woman, it is a thing none of us want. But what shall we sacrifice? What if one life can save your other daughters, your husbands, your sons?”
In the crowd, someone sobbed. Pete Weaver’s widow.
“Now, we had intended,” irritation crossed his face, “To bring at least two of them, but they’re beasts of such intense strength that only one was subdued. The council and I have discussed deep into the night, and we have chosen from among our number a suitable bride.”
I stepped into the center row. Had I ever been bold before? Maybe self-destruction did this. “You don’t need to pick someone,” I called out, my voice, still hoarse from disuse, still managing to carry. Now every eye was on me. “I volunteer.”