Chapter 2
TEETH
Iwoke with the blankets folded over me, and my orc husband gone, the morning sun streaming through the slit windows.
How long had I slept? Voices rose and fell beyond the door, rough and barking.
I pulled on my shift and then Thea's dress, stood in the empty room, feeling my body, the familiar and the strange, the places that ached and didn't. My thoughts scathed me, "If you're going to escape the castle and the orcs, you have to leave the room, Rowena. "
I took several quick breaths and pushed through the door.
The orcs looked up at me. Some were in the process of putting on armor, others were eating more of the salted meat. I met Khal's eyes where he stood by the circle, unnaturally still again.
The young orc broke the stillness, yelled in mildly accented Common, "So was he any good?
" Someone kicked him. My face was burning, and I found it hard to breathe.
How odd to be in a room full of eyes on me, of people who could imagine what we'd done.
They were just orcs, they were savages, but suddenly I couldn't look at anyone.
Khal strode through the others, shoving the younger one onto the ground as he walked to me. "We'll be leaving soon. You should eat something." He pressed another square of the cricket bread into my hand.
The younger one got off the floor and yelled something, and Khal fired back, the sound like arrows sinking into straw. The room erupted laughing, and I shrank back against the wall.
"What did you tell him?" I couldn't help myself, squeaked it out. Khal froze, opened his mouth, closed it.
"He said," the old one gravelled out, "that if Tyralk wants to sleep with him so badly, he'll have to fight you for it."
Khal was studiously avoiding my gaze. "You should eat," he muttered.
I forced cricket bread into my mouth.
The trip through the castle was like a strange dream.
The orcs were tense, the corridors and even the courtyard mostly deserted.
I was at the center of a knot of heavily armed orcs, walking between me and the human guard.
I caught whispers and glances from the few persons gathered in the bailey by the well, felt my face turn to fire, looked away.
I hadn't done anything wrong. We all moved from desperation in this world.
The opinions of people who could never help me wouldn't matter much longer.
We were approaching the portcullis now and the final drawbridge out.
I saw orc hands tightening on weapons. A vein throbbed in Khal's neck.
The drawbridge lowered. They were muttering to each other now. Khal led, and we walked.
We walked out of the walls I'd tried to escape from, over and over, for half my life.
On the other side, one of them gasped, as if in relief, and Khal muttered, "They have archers. Don't slow." And the farther we went the faster we were going, until it was a run. I shrieked with shock as he swept me up under his arm.
The vegetation tore past. I tried to cover my face, was jostled and yanked as he crashed over bushes. We reached the tree cover, kept going. They were yelling to each other, short calls, sprinting over the ground, spreading out through the trees till finally-
Khal barked some command, and they stopped. Some of them crouched, panting. And here I was under his arm like a stolen suckling pig. He lowered me down, and I fell with a thump.
And then they started laughing.
They were slapping each other- hugging? Some of them touched their foreheads to each other; they laughed and pushed each other's heads. They were happy. I sat on the dirt, aching, wondering if they were truly mad.
"We made it," Khal said. "The hard part is over."
The old one spoke. "You can tell me the hard part is over when Drazha doesn't roast us on a spit on your return."
A howl went up. Was he fighting for dominance against this Drazha? Was I trapped in an orc mutiny?
"What is happening?" I croaked.
Khal turned, even his shoulders looking lighter. "We made it. Your father was not lying to kill us." The tension in his face was gone.
"You thought…he was lying?"
"Our peoples don't have a great history, wife."
Someone barked out a comment, and the others laughed.
The one with the scar on his forehead stood up, spat. "We've rested enough. We should get going."
"Overland or by the road?"
My stomach froze.
At no point had I imagined going overland. Overland, where I had no idea how to navigate, how to survive, how to get back to the city at Rowton.
Another orc was speaking. "The human will slow us down overland."
"We could take turns carrying it."
"What about the—" he devolved into Orcish. "—It's still their breeding season."
"Multiple armies," the old one spoke, and all of them went silent, listened, "— just disbanded. Hundreds of men, somehow armed, somewhat trained, far from home without pay. How safe do you think that road will be?"
It was quiet.
"We can take them," the scarred one muttered.
"Probably." The old one looked up. "How many people who look like her do you want to kill in front of Khal's new wife?"
They stared at each other awkwardly.
I needed the road. I needed us to pick the road. "I—" I spoke up, instantly regretted it as their gold eyes swiveled to me. "...I don't mind. Seeing you kill people."
They looked at each other.
"...I would be very heavy and unpleasant to carry."
They burst into laughter again. My face burned.
"The road will be fine." Khal had spoken. He was looking past me, at the orcs. "We can go faster that way, and avoid the beasts. My wife does not object."
"Are you agreeing with her? You think she's hard to carry?"
"She can walk."
I walked.
I walked till I couldn't feel my legs anymore, till every step I willed my feet to lift. Had I been inside castle walls so long I really was this weak? But before life had been running, across rooftops, through alleyways, always dodging and sprinting and stopping. This unending trudge…
As the sun set, we left the road. We'd passed one inn, ignored it, and maybe that was better. As lonely as I was, I didn't know what I'd say if a human spoke to me. We left the path and started into the woods.
"It's safer to camp this way," Khal said. I didn't reply. I was just focused on moving my feet, picking up one and then the other, but now with the uneven ground and the gathering shadows, I was moving holding onto trees.
When they finally halted at a clearing I sunk down to the ground, too tired to care what happened next as long as no one was making me move.
How would I escape like this?
They built a fire. I started sliding in and out of consciousness as they worked and talked among themselves. Some part of me heard Khal offering me bread, curled tighter in on myself. Please, don't expect anything tonight, please…
"She's tired out." Voices drifted above me in the haze.
"We only walked."
"She's a baron's daughter. How much walking do you think she's done?" A quiet laugh, something unnerving in it. "Did you think she'd be an orc?"
"I don't know if I thought at all." Khal muttered. "I find myself entirely unprepared."
"Women are like horses. You keep trying and you'll hit your stride."
"What are you saying, Farkath? Have you ever ridden a horse?"
“Naya, but he's never been ridden!”
They were fighting again, Orcish overtaking the words. I was drifting off into slumber when I heard another low voice.
"Khal," one murmured. "Did you ask her? About her wrists?"
It was quiet.
"No. No, I haven't found a good time."
"You were together all night!"
"We weren't…we didn’t speak of it."
"Because you didn't ask, you incompetent ass—"
"There wasn't a polite time to ask—"
"It's plenty rutting polite to say, 'Hey, since we're alone, I'd like to ask, by the way—'"
"She's an aggressive- I will not discuss this with you."
"Fine. Fine! Keep your secrets. But if we anger Drazha for nothing because you are too much of a blockhead to speak to your own wife—"
"I'll ask her. Just…when it's a better time." Was this the same orc who'd bared his teeth at the minister and called me a fraud? He sounded so much different here.
The other orc started saying something in their language, and Khal interrupted him, "Common. I don't want to deal with Gerzha's tongue tonight."
"Fine. You see that it looks wrong, right? So she's the princess, but there are grazhil- there are binding-wounds on her arms. They're brutal people, okay. But then their chieftain, he doesn't even come to say goodbye? To his own blood?"
"She speaks the Ka Morth. Only their kings learn it."
"Don't some of their clerics? She could be some kidnapped nun—"
"She's not a nun." He'd snapped it. There was a silence. The fire cracked.
"... I'm sorry," Khal said. "This is a lot."
A flask uncorked, a slosh as it was passed around. I hung between waking and sleep, heaviness pulling me to the earth, their voices, grunts and breaths, drawing me back to the fire.
"You're right." Khal had spoken, a huskiness to the rasp.
"It doesn't add up. The pieces are wrong.
That the alliance was agreed to at all. That their chieftain-baron shows so little regard for her welfare.
Her wrists." He drew breath. "I think I was so willing to believe in an eager princess who wanted to leave her people and a distant man who yet loved his daughter because I was too exhausted from the fighting to consider the alternative: that we were all played for fools, and I most of all. "
The silence stretched, and I almost slept, before his companion's voice broke the night. "We all thought it was worth trying. Don't try to…" he slid back into Orcish. "We are here for you, is what I'm saying. Even Farkath. Even Vrathgar. You are not alone. …not until you're telling your mother."
"Hah."
"Do you think she's going to feed your insides to eagles first, or a slow roast over a fire?"
"I'll deal with it."
"You'll have to. I'm not coming near that." It got quiet. "We love you."