5. Gol Droth
GOL DROTH
Ihadn’t seen very many orcs in my life. Perhaps a few days ago, these looming figures and my groom would have seemed alike, more brutes with greenish skin, more bare chests strung with necklaces, more leather and furs.
Now, that one’s eyes seemed smaller, that one’s forehead was broader.
Maybe Vrathgar’s hair was thicker. Now I saw that my husband’s necklace hung with small carved beads, while the orc in the center’s was strung with human-looking teeth.
“Vrathgar,” the one in the lead spread his arms, switched to Common as his gaze found me. “We thought you were dead.”
Vrathgar didn’t move, arms hovering at his sides. “So did I.”
“Balnoc will be glad to hear you survived. He was angry, that you’d been taken.”
“Balnoc will find a place at my fire. We will share the hunt again.” His words were rolling, relaxed, didn’t match the way he stood, ready to act.
The lead orc’s smile widened, lazy. “All this brotherhood, and you were going to leave without goodbyes? Or…” His eyes went back to me. “Is it that you wanted to keep the plunder to yourself?”
The ones behind him laughed as I pulled tighter into myself, a few shouted comments in their tongue. Vrathgar didn’t move. “There is no plunder here,” he said, calm. “You can congratulate me. I am married.”
“Married?” He translated for the orcs behind him, then turned his full focus back to me. “But you cannot be married, Cousin. There is no marriage when you have not gone through the stones.”
“An oath is an oath, Orgar.”
“So you keep the rituals of the f’grik now?”
“When they have me captive, yes. I find I prefer rituals to blades.”
He chortled. “You are funny, Cousin. I always liked that about you. But now, the time for being funny is over, because I am serious, yes?” His wide grin didn’t waver, and it felt like, to my horror, he had too many teeth. “You hand over the woman.”
There was a whisper of sound on the air, the slightest metal ringing. And Vrathgar had a long, curved blade in each of his hands.
The smile on the leader’s face had disappeared. “You draw a weapon in this place?”
“What weapon?” Vrathgar didn’t move. “I’m cleaning my kill.”
There were four of them. There was one of him. But those blades flickered in the light, and none of them wanted to be the one who’d be cut down. Forehead growled something, and Vrathgar answered, “Threats work best on people with something to lose, M’zal.”
The central one’s expression had hardened into something like hatred. “You would insult Gralk?” he said. “For a f'grik?”
“Why would anyone be insulted?” he crooned, and I could hear that harsh smile in his voice. “I’m only keeping what is mine.”
They stood there.
“Wife,” Vrathgar said, “Pick up our equipment. We’re leaving.”
I scrambled to roll up the bedding. My vision was light, and the straps of the pack slipped under my fingers.
“You can keep the fire, and the birds,” he said. “A parting gift.”
None of them stepped forward. “You make a mistake.”
I dragged the pack over, the dowry bundle heavy on top. His arm snake around me, the blade faced away. “I am a mistake.” His other fist knocked the stone, and it glowed.
The lead shouted, as my ears started to ring. “Your mother—"
Vrathgar yanked me backwards, and stepped into the rock.
I hit the ground surrounded by searing sunlight, in a circle surrounded by standing-stones. Vrathgar snatched the pack onto his shoulder and snarled “Move!”
I fled. Fear deadened my pain. As I left the circle of stones he loped alongside me, and I followed him into the trees.
What would we do if they followed? And how would we know if they did? I couldn't run forever. Eventually I was bound to be a liability, and there would come a point where I was more trouble than I was worth to keep.
He grasped my arm and we waded into a stream.
I could be grateful for whatever sense of ownership or duty made him protect me, but I could not depend on it.
I was well aware nothing men did out of guilt could be depended on.
But as long as we were nearer to orcs than humans, I needed him.
After an interminable time of wading, he pulled me up onto the bank.
We ran again.
My lungs were burning when we stopped. I half-fell to the ground, the sunlit glade around us empty of perils, while Vrathgar dropped the pack and scaled a tree.
“I don’t think you can run much longer,” he said. “But I don’t think we’re pursued.” He leapt down, caught his breath. “Still, we shouldn’t stop moving, not till we’re nearer to Drashik lands.” He held out a hand.
He was better than the orcs we’d met in that sanctum. My insides revolted if I let myself think about going with them to bed. He had been dragging me through the woods in sodden skirts that caught the mud, and in contrast to them seemed gallant.
Was this all that falling in love was? Clinging to the least awful monster?
I took his hand.
When we stopped for the night, at an overhang of woven branches that blocked some of the cold, my legs were trembling.
We didn’t make a fire. I peeled off my still damp dress and spread it on a bush, hoping it would be at least slightly dry by morning. I kept the shift. We ate more of the travel bread, and my companion— my husband— laid out the bedroll inside the low shelter.
I should say something to him. Not because he wanted it, but because I needed it. I couldn’t run for hours and hours and then climb into his arms. I needed the illusion of a conversation. I needed the pretense of humanity.
“Thank you. For today,” I sounded too stiff. I was bungling this.
He frowned, still visible in the dying light. “For what?”
“For…saving me.” My face and my neck flushed. I sounded like the maiden in a tinker’s melodrama, like the damsel in a mummer’s show. And clearly he, too, thought I was foolish, because he snorted, disdain.
“Every time I think I know how low humans go, you surprise me again.”
And that…that was unfair. I worked past the smarting in my eyes, my throat, this unfamiliar caring about what an orc would think— clearly I was tired, I was just too tired, and that’s why I was angry and why this hurt.
“I’m sorry, sir, What have I done to merit such commentary? In what way have I disappointed you?”
He shook his head, silhouetted against the sky. “That you think you’d have to thank me after running from danger is pathetic. Did you anticipate that your husband would hand you over to be brutalized?”
“My people handed me over to you.” My throat burned.
He tugged on a strap on the bedroll. “Touché.”
A cloud covered the moon. The breeze was cool against my arms and legs, against the thinness of my shift, but I delayed moving to that dark shelter with the blankets a little while longer.
“Apologies,” he said abruptly. “You met my extended family today. You see there’s no love lost. I know what it’s like, to reject a part of what you come from.” He was quiet, added, “I meant no disrespect to you.”
I swallowed, the knot in my throat a little less painful. “It’s fine,” I said. “We are strangers, anyway.” I squeezed my eyes shut, because surely, that was the wrong thing to say. I listened to the darkness, waited for him to reply.
“Yes,” he said into the night. “Yes, I suppose we are.” He stood, and I realized it was so quiet because his clothes didn’t rustle together like mine. “We should sleep.”
Dread gathered in my gut, but I followed him to the overhang’s shelter. He held the blankets open, and, my stomach sinking farther, I climbed in where I’d be trapped against the wall.
I tried to comfort myself, as the warmth of his body flushed against my back, that I would not be cold. If nothing else, selling myself to an orc meant the end of so many chilly nights huddled near dying coals while my father kept the blankets. The orc’s bedding wasn’t threadbare, either.
Now I had come to comforting myself with blanket quality.
His hand stroked over my cheek, my shoulder, and I didn’t shudder. I think I showed no signs, as his arm encircled my waist.
“It’s late,” he murmured. “We should wait, until we’re clear of the V’radi.” A river, I remembered. He named a river. One of Bogdana’s roads ran near it.
Waiting sounded pleasant. I was not eager to reenact our wedding night.
But I thought about the trouble it was to travel with me, the trouble he went to to keep free of those orcs, the “Gol Droth.” I thought about how much I needed his goodwill.
Tame the monster by lying with it. “I…could be quick,” I whispered, and he chuckled, against my back.
“You’re going to be quick? What are you going to do?”
My mind went empty.
“Try to rest, insatiable wife,” he said. “I will not deny you for long.” His breaths evened against my neck, my ear. So quickly, he slept.
This meant he was exhausted, didn’t it? Because men didn’t say no when they weren’t exhausted, not if they found you attractive, and he didn’t find me repulsive, because I would know, I would have been able to tell that night before.
Regardless of whatever selfish decision this was, gratitude started to bloom inside me, followed by the hot flush of revulsion.
Because wasn’t this what women did? Grabbing at whatever bare threads of humanity we found, creating delusions that we mattered to the people who used us?
It started with gratitude that someone wasn’t exactly as brutal as he could have been, that he slept when he was tired, and soon you were explaining to your children why the monster that hurt them meant well, why he didn’t mean it, why you had to be quiet, why, why, why, the benefit of the doubt until he or you were dead.
There was no time to think of this. I needed to sleep to escape, to possibly kill this man, to survive.
I needed sleep, if I was going to run and climb and struggle like this, over and over, till I forced my way into a place where I could stand.
I needed sleep to stop seeing their faces on my eyelids, my stupid, dying father, Todderick, the orcs by the pool, the golden eyes of this prowling hunter I’d given my body to.
I needed to find sleep as easily as he did, because hadn’t I run as hard?
Rage spiked in me, and I forced down the sob that threatened to shake out.
This was not the time to feel. This was not the time to grieve or be angry or afraid or anything else.
This was not the time for what-ifs or if-evers.
I breathed, deep and even, forced my ragged lungs to rise in time with the hulking man behind and around me.
I made myself focus on the one comfort in this lean-to under a bluff: that the body against mine was not Todderick’s, that I’d chosen, that I’d escaped: this was the orc’s hand on my ribs, the orc’s thigh against my ass, the orc, the orc, the orc.
In the relative peace of my spite, I slept.