Chapter 9
DRAZHA
Iwoke in a tangle of limbs and darkness, trying to leap to my feet, the weakness in my limbs betraying me. A fist was bashing on the door, over and over. Where were we? We were-
“Rowena, I’m here. You’re okay.” Khal caught my waist, lowered me back to my place by the hearth.
“Let me handle this.” He stood, silhouetted against the faint glow from the rafters.
I saw him pick up something in his hand, one of those short spears, and cross to the door.
He did not stand directly in front of it.
“Name yourself,” he boomed, that same voice I heard the first day in the throne room, none of the softness of Khal in it.
From the other side of the door someone snarled. “Khal, it’s me, would you get your head out of your ass?”
Khal unlatched the door. Vrathgar pushed into the house, his house, I supposed, and shoved the door closed behind him, redid the latch.
“Are you alright?” he said, and then his eyes fell on me.
It was strange, the hesitation in the orc’s expression, regret?
He dipped a slight nod, and I nodded back.
“We’re alright,” Khal said. “No trouble. Though I bumped into Sephar on the way back.”
Vrathgar let out a stream of curses. “He didn't try anything?”
“No. Just taunting.”
“I'll break his teeth if I have to.”
“I'd like to pass that honor to you, but I think it will be mine.” Khal’s face was grim. Vrathgar was scanning the house, looking busy, but mostly avoiding looking at either of us.
Khal broke in. “Do you come with news?”
Vrathgar jerked a nod. “Drazha has returned.”
“Casualties?”
“I don’t know, but they carried injured with them.”
“I should go to her.”
Vrathgar blocked the door, dread in his eyes. “Khal. She knows. Someone met her on the road.”
Khal froze. “Sephar.”
Vrathgar’s jaw clenched. “Maybe Sephar,” he agreed.
“She’ll know about this place.”
“Were you planning on running?” Vrathgar didn’t sound like he was joking.
Khal looked back at me. “I’m sorry. I thought we’d have more time for you to recover. She was not expected until…”
I didn’t know what was going on, only that these men I’d seen face monsters were more on edge than I’d seen them since Tyralk’s life was on the line.
“So you want to talk to your mother,” I said. “Explain things.”
He inhaled. “Something like that.” He looked at me. “I won’t leave you alone.”
I blinked. “I could wait here—"
“She’d find you. She’d send someone. You are…safer with me.”
Khal’s mother was an orc chieftain. The pieces started clicking together.
That was like a baron. A baron would not appreciate being deceived.
The horrors I’d heard about orcs inflicting flooded back.
I’d gotten so used to Khal, to feeling safe, but not all humans were like his father. And not all orcs were like Khal.
He helped me to my feet. My vision only darkened for a moment as I caught my balance.
My knees were still weak. But I didn't feel that sucking emptiness in my chest. My body must have gathered some form of power overnight, to fill that void the inferno had left. Still, I mentally shied away from that place inside of me. I didn’t want to use it, to feel that emptiness again.
It stayed on the outskirts of my mind, like a muscle I refused to move, an itch I wouldn’t scratch.
And the faster my pulse raced, the more I felt it, teasing under my skin, longing and terror, weakness and power.
The stars were barely fading high above as Khal led me down the bridges and walkways towards the softly glowing earth. Vrathgar went ahead of us, his presence tense, murderous. Khal’s arm stayed around me, as his gaze swiveled in every direction. My breath clouded in the night.
“Only a moon till we abandon the haven,” Vrathgar bit out. “The timing couldn’t be worse. If this had waited till after the sporing…”
“It was going to happen anyway.” Khal’s voice was tight. “Better to get it over with.”
Vrathgar snorted, but he kept turning, kept watching the dark. Down below, flames gathered. A bonfire? Torches? I clung harder to Khal’s arm.
With a grunt and a smack, a figure landed behind us. The shadow towered above all three of us, two heads taller than Khal as he pushed me behind him. He didn’t draw his sword, just stared up into the black. “Jarlass,” he said.
Two more impacts, bracketing Vrathgar. I could see them, if I let the power go to my eyes, but I wouldn’t, didn’t.
“Sorry, little Khal.” The voice was deep, as massive as the figure. “No hard feelings. You know how she can be.”
“And you know I’m not running. So how about you walk us down.” There was a steel edge under his words.
The large figure chuckled. “Fine, then. If there’s no trouble.” He took a long step forward, and Khal, maintaining himself between the giant and me, turned back to move me again.
“I heard,” Jarlass rumbled again, “that congratulations might be in order. Or condolences.”
Khal’s step didn’t falter. “It will be congratulations.”
Someone snickered up ahead, and Vrathgar snarled something.
“Now then,” Jarlass boomed. “A little optimism never killed anyone. Give the young ones space there.”
We could light them on fire, I thought, and immediately chastised myself.
These were Khal’s people. This was Khal’s home.
And I…I wasn’t sure how much fire I could even make with the terror-power that I worked to keep trapped beneath my skin, wasn’t sure if I’d have more than a few seconds of seeing in the dark before this power in me winked out like a candle.
I told myself that, but as warmth surged in my fingertips, I knew that it was more than that.
The earth at the bottom of the cavern pressed soft under our feet. Ahead, in an open circle ringed in low boulders, dark figures were illuminated by flame.
There were so many.
As we drew nearer, I made out the differences between this host and Khal's band, many older, their weapons more varied than the steel he and his brethren wielded. And there were women, more than half of them, hair braided or shaved, eyes fierce or calculating. Khal’s band was meant to work for the human lords, to scout, to remove the dangers of the wilds.
But this was a war band. These were orcs in the wild.
Khal’s hand closed over mine, angling me behind him as he stepped into that circle of firelight.
Some of the warriors’ faces were curious or amused as their gazes raked over me, but many…
many were angry. One at the center, with shining, pearly teeth woven into her hair, actually snarled in disgust. Khal stopped, stared at the snarler.
His voice was stoic, calm. “Hello, Mother.”
Khal’s mother was hardly taller than me. I don’t know why I’d pictured someone taller. The face that had captivated Khal’s father was fierce, sharp cheekbones, dark brows, and eyes of deep, molten gold…eyes that burned on me with open hate.
The words flowing off her tongue sounded like fire cracking, like a cat’s rising growl.
Khal answered her, steady. She snapped, stepped forward again.
It was not only her responding to his words.
There were snarls on more faces, more anger.
There were so many of them. And they were armed, and Khal was fast, he was good, but he fought monsters, not groups of warriors.
With me to weigh him down, we’d already seen how easily he could be captured. And now, injured…
I slid my hand out of Khal’s grasp, to press my heating palms against my thighs.
The flashes of blinding color and heat stabbed at the outskirts of my vision.
The magic wanted out, and I…I wanted to understand.
I wanted to know what was happening, what on the Goddess’s green earth was being said.
I had listened to minds once, hadn’t I? If I knew danger was coming, I could help, at least for a moment.
If I could just know what they spoke. The words, snarls and growls and spit, Khal’s many consonants and rolling tones, they rushed on my mind like an enemy.
And with my terror, I felt the power break loose, felt it mix with those words rushing on my mind, until, clear and shining, I understood.
Khal, those rich, even tones of his voice, he said, “I gave my oath. Should that mean nothing?”
“You gave your oath? What about Terzha? You made her a promise!”
“No. You did.”
A growl ripped out of the line to the left of him, but he didn’t flinch.
“You betray our people for this?” The hand she jabbed towards me was smeared with paint. “This weakling? She looks like a chipmunk could kill her. Is that what you wanted? Some weak thing to make you feel strong?”
“She is weak from slaughtering eight men to save me at Rowton.”
“Eight and she falters? Glidda’s granddaughter had taken that many before reaching her menarche.”
“She burned down a wall.”
A snort. “And now she can barely walk. She’d die crossing the threshold to bring a child into this world.”
“You are not being fair. You know they are raised differently.”
“You know this!” she bared her teeth. “And now you want an outsider you barely know to bear you daughters and sons? You want children with some wispy stranger who can’t even speak your people’s tongue?”
“Father learned.”
“That is not the same and you know it. The mother tongue matters.”
“I could teach them.”
“You would not have to teach them if you didn’t bring something with no strength into our midst!”
“She has strength.” His voice was raw. “Rowena is a wielder of power.”
Murmurs rippled outwards, pieces that I could and could not understand. “Wielder—" “The fae lines—" “The cursed bloods…”
Drazha’s eyes went flat, angry. “So she's ensorcelled you.”
“You raised me. You know me. I have not been ensorcelled.”
“Why would they give up their sorceress, if not to send danger into our midst?”
“They didn't know. Her powers awakened on the journey.”
“And you believe this.”
“Yes. I do.”
“You are blinded.” She spat it.
Khal’s grip tightened on my wrist. “She saved my life two times. She killed her kind to preserve my life.”
“Did she also preserve herself? Did she use this trust she bought with tricks to be led back to our home?”
“She nearly died.”
“But she lives.”
“Yes,” he said. “My wife lives.”
“Your wife.” Her lip curled. She took a step back, toward those warriors, toward the band that looked at us with disappointment and hate. “By what authority?”
And now there was a growl in Khal's voice. “I married her.”
“Where? By what rite?”
His teeth ground together. “In her father's house, at Belnor.”
Her eyes were so cold. “You are not married.”
He stepped forward, and a tall orc put a warning hand on his shoulder. “Mother,” he ground out. “You know this is wrong. You know why I used their rite, so they could not deal treacherously with our people—"
“Why should we respect their customs when they respect none of ours?”
“You married my father!”
“Yes! By our laws!” She was yelling. “Has their word ever made a difference? You want an alliance with people who have robbed us, lied, killed, who have swindled your brothers—"
“I did, yes! I wanted friendship for our peoples! And that was my decision to risk!”
“It is not your decision whether we accept that risk.”
They stared at each other.
“Will you exile me, then?”
She didn't falter. “No need. She's the one who broke our laws entering this place.”
“I carried her in unconscious. You cannot do this.”
“I can do a great many things—"
“Mother.”
She stopped. She didn't smile.
“She's valuable,” he repeated.
“Oh?” she said. “Where are the potions they promised?”
“That was not her oath.”
“And this was not mine.”
A voice called over the crowd, in their same Orcish, “What's that? Is this the happiest day of my life? Is this the triumphant return of the most glorious rose of the battlefield, the huntress of my heart?”
The crowd parted, some of the warriors chuckling or smirking, and Piotr was there, lurching along, Hagmar at his side looking winded, eyes wide. Piotr strode into the breech and, leaning on his cane, he threw the other arm wide. “My wife! You look even more lethal than when we parted!”
“I know what you are doing and it won't work, husband.” Her chin jutted out. “You coddle him. I must make choices for our people.”
“I didn't marry Drazha of the half-blade because I wanted to be in charge, love of my life.” At that a laugh rippled across the crowd gathered, and he smiled through it.
“But you just returned! Surely all this choosing could happen on a full stomach, yes?
There is no need to rush. Does our daughter-in-law look like she's running away?” He reached the center of the circle, between us, put a hand on my shoulder.
Drazha hissed under her breath, but with Piotr there, it felt like some of the venom had left her. “She looks like the squirrels and the mice would devour her not ten steps outside.”
“She's stronger than she looks. It would take at least…five squirrels.” He released me, held a hand out to his wife. “Please, captress of my love, let's all calm down before you finish scolding our son, alright? Just some rest and a meal. For my sake.”
She stared at me one more second, as if tabulating all the ways I could die, before she looked away.
“Fine. The band needs rest. We will convene at the morrow's moonrise, when we've eaten meat and slept by fires.” Her voice rose with the last instruction, and her warriors shouted agreement, started filtering out into the crowd that had gathered outside the circle.
The pale and fuzzy dawn cast its soft light on embracing families, couples and friends.
None of them seemed particularly worried about what would come next, except for us.
Piotr winked at me, muttered in Common, “See? No worries,” before saying to Khal, in Orcish, “I hope you have a diversion planned. Don't make your mother kill your wife.” He clasped his shoulder and then followed Drazha from the ring. She didn't look back at us.
Vrathgar came up beside Khal. “Better than I expected,” he grunted. “I guess she has a soft spot for you.”
Khal shook his head.
Just then, I staggered as the last of the power that had gathered in my body ran out, and the thread of whatever spell gave me comprehension snapped.
“Rowena! Are you alright?” Khal's face was inches from mine, worried, desperate.
“I'm f-fine.” Heat rose in my face. The orcs were watching. Even in this, I was making him look weak. “Sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” He looked over my head, scanning for something, and a lump rose in my throat. What an odd thing, to have him believe that.
“We need to get out of here,” Vrathgar said, Common again. His eyes weighed me, and then he looked away. “Let's go see Tyralk.”