7. A Twisting Song #2
He nodded, as if that was something expected, as if he wasn’t surprised. “Not unique. The making of children is not the sole domain of saints.”
What was I supposed to say to that?
“I probably should have anticipated this, in marrying outside our people. Since every human I’ve known has had parents that were shit.”
I broke the thread off his arm.
He pulled to his feet. “We need to be moving.” He swayed, braced against the tree.
“You’re still weak.”
“Yes. And I’ll be weak on my feet or as a sitting target.” He reached for the pack.
I grabbed it in front of his hand. “At least let me carry this.”
His eyebrows rose. “You think you can carry it?”
“I do.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s as heavy as I am.”
“Then if I have to carry you next you’ll know I can.”
The side of his mouth smiled, faintly. “Fine. Lift it.”
I dragged it to the top of an outcropping, and used the height to leverage it down onto my back. I was not confident I could lift this from the ground, or that if I fell under it I’d get back up again. But I was on my feet. I stared, defiant.
He bowed his head in acquiescence. “I have married a valiant pack-mule. Let’s move.” He stepped onto that leg for the first time, and grimaced. I could only imagine the agony.
“I could…I could sing to it,” I croaked. “For the pain.” Embarrassment heated my face, at how that must sound, after this.
He kept walking. “I'm not in a place to fight another abomination when your song calls them.”
“That's never happened to me before.” My throat was dry. “I don’t…I don’t call things.”
He glanced my way, refocused on the way through the trees. “I believe you. You have never summoned creatures before.” He dodged the low branches. “But you have never left your village before either, have you? And you’ve never laid a man before. Sorry. Married one.”
I could move forward under the weight, as long as I did not need to stop.
He held a branch out of my way, let me pass, and I felt a moment of foolish, pointless nerves, being close to him.
Ridiculous, when we both smelled like blood.
Dangerous, when we fled monsters. He passed me again and continued, still scanning the trees.
“Magic can be linked to the land, A change of place can mean a change of power. That or…a change of company, perhaps. We’ll need to be careful, till we’re among safer trees. ”
Safer trees. I wondered if that was an idiom from Orcish, or if he meant the literal trees were less safe.
“Magic gets stronger with use. When we reach my people, you can have time to dabble with it.”
“But orcs hate magic.” I blurted it out, and then froze, as his gaze swiveled to me.
He assessed me a second, turned back to the path to lurch. “We fear power when it’s wielded against us,” he said. “No one fears healing. We fight and bleed for elixirs to heal our wounded.” He dragged himself over a rise, got back his breath. “It’s not magic we distrust. It’s men.”
Not magic, but me.
But he was making plans that involved me being alive. I should be glad. Even if I had been sure about slipping away, I couldn’t now, could I? He’d been harmed trying to defend me. I should get him to where he’d be safe, before I thought any further.
I did not let myself think about whether kindness was self-destruction. I didn’t let myself question whether defending me was anything but selfishness to him. I just focused on the blood and the stitches, on the memory of swords and claws, and I moved.
We walked nauseating hours. When we reached a stream, I waded in to fill our waterskin, because I wasn’t sure if I bent down that I could get back again.
Then, sodden and wet, I returned to tramping through the trees, and it was a good thing that I’d taken the pack, because he tried to look strong but he stopped, often, to lean against the trees, to breathe harder.
We stopped early, for the night, and I felt weightless and numb when the pack came off my shoulders.
“I’ll get the firewood,” I said, and he sat heavily against a tree, and didn’t answer.
I traced back to where I'd seen the wild onions, the over-tough, grown leaves of fleawort that we could still eat if we boiled them, trying not to dwell on why I was collecting foods that fought infection, or on what I would do if my sole protector fell sick in these woods. The fatigue would have to hit me at some point, the screaming of my muscles, but my heart was still pounding, too quick, too fast, like a deer watching for the hunter, and I knew it wouldn’t be today that my body broke on me.
I made it back with my arms full of dry wood and borrowed his flint to catch a blaze.
His eyes were closed. I wondered if I might need to stay awake all night, to make sure nothing went wrong.
And then I wondered why I cared so much.
“We shouldn’t sleep by the fire,” he said, like he argued with someone who already spoke.
“I know.”
“We’re farther from your people, but there’s always a risk.”
I said what I could think of, some part of me still wishing I could keep him talking, so I’d know he was alive. “Is it my people we’re running from?”
“Jealous ex-suitors, protective cousins, justice-hungry townsfolk…” he shifted his weight, winced. I unstrapped the bedroll, and brought it to his side, something to lean on. He took it. “This kind of marriage usually has its objectors. Among your kin and mine.”
I found the small cauldron again, started the task of hanging it. “Will I be facing such things, when we run into your kin?”
“Jealous exes, unlikely. Protective cousins, no. Busybodies and ne’er-do-wells…” He grimaced again.
He was silent. I took his knife and started cutting the onions, bulbs and stalks, breaking the fleawort into pieces to throw in.
“No one will harm you,” he said. “We're not monsters.”
I didn’t comment, and didn’t ask more questions.
He hissed through his teeth, eyes still shut. “I’m botching this again. You’re not trying to fight.” He raked his fingers through his hair, the hand from his un-injured arm. “I’m sorry. Ask me a question, and I’ll answer it.”
I had no desire to poke an injured orc with interrogations, but ignoring his attempt at peace could be dangerous, too. I cast about for a topic that wouldn’t raise his ire. “What…what do you like in bed?”
His eyes flew open. “What?”
“In bed. In…in sex. What do you like?” This was the better topic. He had clearly forgotten that in his mind we had been arguing.
“Are you worried about something?”
“Isn’t this a normal thing to ask a husband?” I threw the onions in. “This is all I’m able to do for you right now.”
“I’m not exactly showering you with gifts myself.” He fiddled with the handle of a sword. “I like it when you make sounds.”
“Sounds?”
“Like…” he brought his voice into falsetto. “Ah.”
I ducked over the cauldron, wished I could pretend the heat in my face was only steam.
For once he didn’t mock my embarrassment. “It’s nice to know what’s working and what’s not. Just…that we like the same things.”
“I’ll try to talk more.”
“Sure.” He cleared his throat. “What about you? What do you like?”
“I like…” Flashes of the night before came to mind, skin and heat and so many feelings I wasn’t ready to understand. The words seemed jumbled, lost, and I had to say something, couldn’t look like an idiot— “Your chin.”
He laughed out loud. It looked like it hurt, the awkward way he held himself. “My chin?”
“It’s…” I sounded so stiff. “It looks nice.”
That teasing came back, that devilish smile. “There’s got to be a better answer than that. You seem to like it when I—" His head snapped up. He’d heard something.
In a flash he grabbed the blanket off the roll and threw it over his legs, the sword at his side. And then I heard the next twig snap, saw the figures moving through the trees.
“Hakran,” the lead waved in greeting. “We ask permission to share your fire.”
Three human men walked out of the trees towards us.