22. A Bastard’s Price
A BASTARD’S PRICE
He woke me with a kiss. “Nora?” His voice was low. “They’ll open the doors soon.”
The room resolved around me, hazy, glittering torchlight and the shape of my husband over me. “How do you know?”
He laughed, quiet. “Do you want to argue? You’re the modest one of us, I could go again—"
I threw off the blanket and went to put on my dress. I was finishing the ties when his arms wrapped around my waist. “Vrathgar—"
“Just a moment,” he said. His face rested against my neck. “Just a moment.”
I wasn’t going to push the heat of him away.
When he stepped back I saw he was already dressed.
“So we’re married by orc rites,” I said. “How does it feel?”
“Like I’m going to wake up,” he said. There wasn’t a trace of humor in his face. “I keep having to touch you to prove that it’s real.”
I was the one who was supposed to feel that way. I was the one caught in a dream, waiting for a nightmare. I tangled my hand in his. “We can prove it to both of us.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure we will.”
When the white light streamed in, I was blind again for a second. His hand found mine.
The eyes of the orcs felt less overwhelming than before. There were still stares, but maybe it was easier, knowing I wouldn’t have to leave. Maybe I had been waiting for them all to chase me away.
Laughter splashed across the clearing, and Larrakh was with a few of the other young warriors. She met my eyes to wave in greeting, and something in my heart leapt. Orcish sounded, and the tall woman from before waited by a nearby tent, her arms folded, her face a little less severe.
“I’ll need to speak with my aunt,” he said. “Do you want to come, or…” His aunt wouldn’t speak Common.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. Across the clearing, Larrakh waved again. “I’ll see you later.”
He brushed a kiss to my forehead.
Maybe that relief, that hope, should have been an indication that something horrible would happen. I had believed that, once. That the world punished hope.
I was with Larrakh’s friends, trying to cobble together an understanding from their Common, learning all their names, when the sun climbed to its zenith, warriors peeling off to eat at their own families’ fires.
I knew I should look for Fenha and Vrathgar, but as I said goodbye to Larrakh, I noticed a flash of hair between the ferns.
An orc child pulled a face at me, tongue-lolling, hands dragging the corners of her eyes down. I grabbed my ears and made a face back.
The child shrieked with surprise and ducked, before popping out again. They made another face, jabbered something I didn’t understand, and I was laughing. She— I think it was a girl— clambered out of the brush, still babbling, and grabbed my hand.
I followed the child through the bracken, into the well-spaced trees, and there were voices ahead, the burbling of water.
A little brook was gushing up, and a handful of other feral-looking cherubs were shouting and splashing, the oldest maybe nine.
They were climbing and slipping on the stones.
Maybe it was better to be late for the noon repast. I couldn’t tell anyone to go home, and surely it was better to have a non-child around water?
My jabbering charge let go of my hand and was running to jump into the mud at the bank with a squeal.
There was some dispute among the children as to rules of play, but they all agreed it was okay to splash water at me.
One of them brought me a mollusk shell. One of the stones like the ones from their hallowed circle was here, alone and knocked over, weathered by this stream, and I perched on it to watch their playing, a little farther from the splashes.
The sun was sinking towards the heat of afternoon when something felt… wrong.
I couldn’t place it, what had changed. I counted the children, counted them again. All the same. The back of my neck itched. I wished I knew words to ask them to head back with me, but how would I explain it? “Something feels different and I don’t know what?”
Then I realized what it was, above the sound of the stream and the children’s shouts. The birds had stopped crying.
I got to my feet, hoisting up the one who had fallen asleep on me. I needed words, needed signs, was scrambling, Common. “Hey—" And then I saw Vrathgar through the trees, the most welcome face. I saw his smile broaden in relief, and then, before either of us could cry out, I saw his face change.
“Annora, move!”
And on my side of the brook, a dark, serpentine neck punched through the green.
The monstrosity’s beak sliced my arm as I spun the child away.
The children were screaming and I don’t know what I yelled at them.
Four more dark shapes emerged from the trees.
I hopped heavily off the stone into the water, and the child in my arms was awake, screaming and clinging, another child grabbing my leg. They were coming from three sides.
Weren’t the monsters supposed to be thinned? Wasn’t this place supposed to be safe? Another head dived, and metal sheared against its beak.
Vrathgar’s swords spun. I pulled the children back with me against the stone. He was lunging, scaring them back. Two more heads appeared from the trees.
The babes screamed fear, and this was what the monsters were looking for, why even with blades they weren’t turning away. Why had someone made these? Why make a creature that only wanted blood?
I wished I’d had the presence to pick up a branch, a stick, anything.
One of them grazed his arm. Blood flowed red. Now the creatures were getting frenzied, more crowding in.
He needed more time. We needed more swords, more arms. We needed the children out of here. We needed time. Surely someone had heard the screaming.
Maybe my voice would make it worse, maybe I sang and called all the monsters of the world down on us, but we needed time. I remembered the snake-creature freezing, and grabbed at my last thread of something to try.
“Vrathgar,” I shouted. “I’ll hold them back. Take the children.”
He didn’t take his eyes off the terror-birds, but his voice made it clear he thought me mad. “What?”
I sang.
They wanted blood. I sang blood.
I sang my father’s guts spilling out on the floor. I sang the bandit in the forest bleeding out, hot and sticky over my hands. I sang my hands smearing red across the rock of the pit.
The birds’ heads rose.
I sang. For the moment they weren’t attacking Vrathgar, their eyes set on me. I pried a child’s hand off my leg, pushed her towards my husband. Vrathgar turned to look at me, his eyes stricken, and I kept the cadence as I held out the one in my arms.
He didn’t argue, didn’t waste the time I could make. He scooped up the children, one around his neck, the one on his shoulder, another in his arms. “I’ll be back,” he hissed, and I nodded. I sang.
More serpentine birds appeared through the trees.
I sang Vrathgar’s headwound in that cell, the cut on his lip copper on my mouth.
More moved in, and they were hungry, they would strike if I wavered.
I tried to get them to sway, like the serpent had back on Tyralk’s hunt I’d been afraid to speak to, to test how far I could maintain the control.
If I could tell them what to do, could I make them run away?
I tried a trill of revulsion, Todderick blocking the narrow alley, and one of them made a move closer, stepped forward, and I doubled back to blood again, Mercy Owens soaking the sheets red as Bogdanna shouted orders.
When I sped up, I risked them closing in.
When I slowed down, I risked losing control.
I started smacking my palm against my thigh to keep time.
I sang my mother’s broken nose. I sang the blood in my mouth. I sang my terror when my own womb had started its courses.
There was movement in the forest, where Vrathgar and the children had disappeared. I couldn’t look, but my ears caught the footfalls, the breaks in rhythm. The birds were getting restless. I looped back to the axe, like a chorus, and they swung towards me again. One stepped closer.
There were at least two dozen now. Five of them were close enough to touch. If the approaching force of the orcs disturbed the song, was there any way I would survive?
Then the sound changed, a rhythmic slap. Someone else was keeping time.
Footfalls moved with the music. I pushed the song up again, into the chorus, the axe and the blade.
The birds stayed still as faces I recognized filtered into the clearing.
Hagmar, Larrakh, and others, so many whose names I'd never come to learn.
Larrakh's eyes were wide. I was doing it.
I had them. The birds stayed suspended in space, and I realized Vrathgar was beside me.
The birds were surrounded.
I sent out one last crescendo, the memory of the birds’ blood speckling Vrathgar’s face, as he raised his sword and yelled.
Scaled heads split from necks. Talons flailed. Larrakh stabbed one through and wheeled to take a second. Vrathgar’s blades wheeled, and nothing touched me.
A sheet of flame took five of them that tried to run. I yiped shock as Vrathgar laughed. Oh. Rowena. She was a sorceress.
It was too good. It was too much hope. Too much safety.
Vrathgar turned from the bodies arrayed around him, back to me, his smile that same, crooked shape I’d first met in a village cell, his eyes so carefree.
He was saying something, about the children, the little ones I’d shoved at him.
One of the younger orcs had cut off one of the monstrous heads close to the top of that snake-neck, and the dark body flailed, spasmed.
I screamed warning, and Vrathgar turned.
Right as the claw struck him in the gut.
Another orc tackled the body, brought it down. They were stabbing. Blood was pouring from my husband’s body, his chest.
I screamed.
I screamed and runes lit the fallen pillar, running symbols up the stone, the very air humming. Khal turned and dove to catch him as he fell, his bladed staff falling in the dirt. Tyralk was running towards us.