9. Others
OTHERS
Iwoke and scrambled up from the cloak, pain clenching in my limbs and neck. I had slept long. Full morning sun fell across the hollow, golden shafts through the trees. My orc was where I’d left him, leaning against the earthen wall with his head on his chest.
He was breathing.
“You’re awake,” he said.
I went to his side, started checking the wounds over. His lips were pale. His thigh was inflamed.
“This is bad,” I said.
He shook his head. “I can walk. Just help me up.”
When I had, he swayed on his feet. “Toward the mountain.” He leaned against an oak. “We’ll make it.”
I struggled with the pack. My arms were jelly. I couldn’t get it onto my shoulders.
“Leave it,” he said. “We’ll take the water and one day’s ration.”
I pulled flatbread in wax cloth out, untied the water and worked to make a sling over my shoulder from the gifted cloth. A bundle of cloth, some grain, a fur pelt, a set of bone needles. Every gift I’d been given by the town, and I was leaving almost all of it behind. “Won’t we need these things?”
His gaze was unfocused. “No. We’re close to the enclave.” My stomach iced. We would reach his people by leaving the pack behind, or we would not survive to miss it. “This way.”
He lurched from tree to tree, keeping himself on his feet. His steps were halting, his breathing heavy. By the time the sun was high, his teeth chattered.
“You have a fever.” Despair bloomed in my chest. “Wait. Please.” I got him to drink the rest of the water. Part ran down his chin.
“I’m sorry,” he slurred.
“You’re fine.” My hands were shaking.
“No. I’m sorry…that you’re stuck out here with me.” He reeled back, gripped a branch. “I’ll get you safe. When you get to the enclave…you can get away from me. Like all of them.” His eyes closed, teeth gritting at the pain.
“Your enclave has people who care about you, right? Your brothers? The…the fox and the bear?” I was grasping at straws. “They’ll help me take care of you. We’ll get you strong again.”
He nodded, and took a step.
And he crashed into the forest floor.
“Vrathgar—" I was sliding in the leaves, catching at him, and I didn’t even know what I was doing, how I’d get him up. What do you say? “Are you alright?” He wasn’t alright. He might never be alright.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think…I can make it.” His hand went to the necklace. “Take it. Drazha—"
“I will take it off your corpse when you’re cold.
Get up.” I was shaking so hard, and I didn’t know why.
“Let me help you get up, and you lean on me, do you hear me? I am not walking alone into a camp of orcs.” His words from the night before surfaced in my mind, and I grabbed at them, ruthless.
“Get up. No…no child of yours is growing up without a father.”
His breathing caught. He forced his weight onto one arm, then the other.
And then I could get him over my shoulder, manage to take most of his weight.
We stumbled and limped together, hours that felt like days, till the third time he fell, and he didn’t get up.
I dragged him onto my back and was able to carry him, some few hundred paces, before I couldn’t lift him anymore.
The afternoon sun came through the branches, trees forced up from the ground among the rocks, and he was going to die.
He took my hand, brought it back to the web around his neck. “Take it,” he gritted out.
“You’re not dead,” I snarled. I was supposed to be able to find medicine all around us.
I was supposed to be Bogdana’s pupil. But my own vision had been blurring.
There was no fleawort, no wild onion, no delicate garlic flowers.
Once I thought I saw yarrow blooming, but it was queen’s lace, only poison. My arm throbbed. Even my teeth ached.
I touched his forehead with my shaking hand. “Your fever is breaking,” I said. “See? You don’t even feel warm.”
“No, Annora.” His eyes looked so empty. “You’re fevered. You’ve been shivering for the last hour.”
That made sense with the weakness of my muscles. Normally I could carry him. I was so sure I could carry him.
“You don’t need to stay,” he said. “There’s a greater chance that someone finds you ahead, if you reach the slope. If you take the necklace, they’ll know what it means. You can send them back to me.”
“You’re lying.” Why was I so angry? “Something will eat you.”
“There’s always something that could eat me.”
“That doesn’t help!”
“Annora.” When had he started using my name? “We don’t both have to die.”
And that was infuriating.
I was not letting go of him after I’d gone through all this not to kill him. I was not letting go of him after I’d killed to keep him alive.
“Let me sing to you.”
“Annora—"
“You want me to leave you, you have to let me try.”
He reached up, as I leaned over him, and touched my cheek, the tears I didn’t realize that I’d cried. He looked so detached, so tired. “You have acquitted yourself well. You’ve been valiant. Now you go.”
“I did not marry you,” I hissed, “to leave you dying in a forest.”
The side of his mouth quirked. “I’m pretty sure you married me to leave me dying beside a stewpot, barbarian.” The smile vanished. “You need to run.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
He wasn't even lifting his head. “You want me alive.”
My fingertips dug into the earth. What did he want me to say? That I was a weakling? That I was a coward? “Please.”
His lips were parched, cracking. “If the wizards’ abominations come, I can’t help you.”
“If the aberrations come neither of us will care, because we'll both be dead.” I was shaking.
He shook his head. “Why are you asking me for permission? I’ve never been your jailer.”
Why was I asking him permission?
I started to sing.
I was already weak. My voice creaked and popped.
It was a madrigal, stolen snatches of a church melody, pieces that were supposed to echo and build on each other.
I tried to sing strength, to sing healing, while my head swam, while my parched throat rasped and ached.
I think maybe my hands warmed a hair. Something was off. The birds had gone silent.
He opened his eyes, those iron-forge flames looking into mine. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish…I could have gotten you safe.” His eyes closed.
“No! No no no…” The clearing was spinning, blurring around me.
“No!” I had to fix it, the wounds, the infection, the fever.
There was sweat on his brow, but his skin was cold.
My fingers hurt as I tore at the bandaging, my wrists, every bone and joint.
I tried to sing, a nursery-song, the one my mother used on scraped knees and elbows.
I tried to shove the image of her face away from me, because why couldn’t she do it, and why had I been born when she could have been free?
Why had she doomed us both to darkness and silence, left and left him living?
I wanted to scream, but I needed the orc alive, I needed him with me, and songs for scraped knees and aching hearts didn’t purge infection from wounds, didn’t drive the blood-sickness back.
I needed him back. I needed to find out if I’d made the wrong choice.
I needed to hear him speak and laugh and watch him talk to others with that confident sneer like when he ordered around the overseer.
I needed to hate myself climbing into his bed again and forget I had a self to hate in his arms.
He was supposed to live. I was supposed to save him.
I sang. I was wailing, begging, the song tumbling, higher and higher. Come back. Come back. Come back. Come back.
And then I was seeing things.
An orc, grizzled and ugly, walked out of the trees. At first he seemed like he was floating, and then he was too solid, too near.
The Gol Droth. Vrathgar’s family had found us again, and they were going to take him back, going to tear us away. They’d cut off my ears and I wouldn’t even get to hold him as he died. If Vrathgar was awake, he’d fight them. He’d pull out his swords.
His swords.
I grabbed a hilt and drew it free, heavy in my two hands. “You get back,” I snarled. “You won’t touch him.”
The grizzled orc backed up. He was speaking, but the world was soup, my mind filling in the edges.
And now I knew this wasn’t real, because the next figure was a man, older, like the ones at the village pub, a walking staff in one hand— a weapon— his face too friendly, menacingly jovial. And humans would strike Vrathgar down like a dog; humans would be worse than the Droth.
“I said get back!” The blade was heavy. I took a lunge forward, wobbling in my stance, because I had to make sure of where it was, had to know if I dropped this it wouldn’t hurt him. “You won’t touch him.”
The man raised his hands, his walking-stick standing without them. “There now, young miss, no one means your companion harm.” He was still speaking, friendly eyes, like the men at the fire, who smiled and smiled and struck.
“I’ll kill you,” I said. My arms were trembling. I’d have to be quick. “I’ve killed already.”
“I don’t doubt you, lass.” He was staying out of range, hands still high. His eyes gave nothing away. If someone came up behind me, I would be down. We would be dead. “I’m worried about that boy.”
Were there more of them in the trees? If I killed this one, would it matter? The orc— the old orc— was still there, in the shadows. Why could I still see the orc? Was the orc real? Was the man?
“You’ve come a long way,” his voice soothed. “With your accent…North of the Vradi, I assume? Beautiful place. Strong people.”
“I won’t let you hurt him.”
“I can see that.” He held his hands out. “May I ask how you know him? That lad is important to me.”
That felt like a snag. I knew that he was stalling, but still I answered. “He’s my husband.”
“Your husband.” His eyebrows had risen. “Congratulations are in order. But it seems he’s come to harm.” He hadn’t moved, all this time, still outside of my reach. “Would you like some help?” He held out a hand. “Can I help him?”
The blade was heavy. There were shadows now in the trees, too many of them. And this was a trick. This was a trick, but if any part of it was real, if they’d help him…the words were on my lips, please…
“Stop.”
Terror closed around me like a gauntlet, squeezing off the air, like a fist, and I couldn’t move, could barely breathe. The air around me was solid, and this wasn’t delirium, this was magic. The worst kind of magic.
A woman with blue-black hair like ink strode into the clearing, her eyes glowing silver. Her arms were bared. Her skirt ended at her knee, like some feral thing, like she was one of them. She reached me, and wrenched the sword out of my hand, and I gasped at the pain.
“My dear girl,” the man was saying. “I had it covered. She was going to put it down—"
“I am not letting you get decapitated so you can be kind.” There were more shadows in the trees, orcs coming forward. Why orcs? Were these humans working with the Droth? Did the Droth have a sorceress?
She walked past me towards Vrathgar’s unconscious form.
I had to stop her. She had the sword. She had whatever power was crushing me to stillness. I had to make her stop…
There was nothing left to lose by singing now.
I started a melody, an old lullabye. Go to sleep. Just go to sleep. Turn back, lay down—
“Rowena? What is it?” The man was speaking.
“I felt something.” The woman’s voice, behind me. “What did Gnarlak say she was doing when he found her?”
“Singing.”
“She’s a wielder. Bind her.”
That’s where I lost consciousness.