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I hear some of them talking loudly, but they’re some way off, and I don’t think much of it until five orcs emerge from the trees and make their way to their leader’s fire.
‘We want her,’ one of them states without preamble. ‘We haven’t had a female in over two moons. I’m sick of buggering this one.’
He pushes the orc next to him, who gives him a scowl.
Orik gets up slowly, dropping the whetstone and stepping in front of me. ‘You know the rules. She’s mine until I’m done with her.’
The orcs’ attack is sudden and coordinated, but he fights them off, slaying two, and I think he’s going to win, but then a few others weigh in.
At the same time, the commotion at the perimeter of the camp becomes impossible to ignore. I can hear loud snarling from whatever animal they’ve captured, as well as orc screams of pain.
I stand up slowly and begin to back away from the fire, deciding it’s time to take my chances in the dark. I almost make it. I’m close enough that my heart begins to beat in elation, but then an arm claps around my waist, and I’m dragged off my feet.
The force I’m thrown to the ground pushes the air from my lungs, and I gasp for breath as the smaller orc who caught me in the forest leans over me, his rancid breath making me gag. I struggle, catching his face with my fingernails and drawing blood, but he just grins nastily, a massive hand circling my throat to keep me in place as he pushes up my skirts.
I turn my head away. There’s no getting out of this. Even if I escape from this one, others are watching, awaiting their turn. This is what it is to be a human woman in the Dark Realms. I resign myself to what’s going to happen, hoping that I survive. I see the orc leader’s head rolling away from his body across the clearing. It comes to a stop close to me, Orik’s lifeless eyes directly in my vision. I see movement behind it, and when I focus past the head to the edge of the camp, I realize with a sinking sensation that the creature they’ve caught is Grey. He’s still shifted. He’s chained, collared, fighting. He’s losing, just like I am. It suddenly comes to me that I haven’t felt the pain in my chest from Dane’s conjure to keep me from escaping since I got here, even when Grey ran off.
He’s been following me. He’s been taken because of me.
He roars as an arrow goes through his hide, and I watch in horror as they play with him, goad him, and hurt him. Several arrows stick out from between the scales on his back. They slice and cut him, bleeding him to make him weak.
The orc on top of me has hardly moved. He’s talking to another one close by. Perhaps he isn’t in a rush, wants to savor the human now that his leader is dead, but when I turn my head to look at him, I see that, like me, his attention is on Grey. He looks down at me as if recalling that he was in the middle of something, and I feel him lick up my throat, his hand on my leg beginning its ascent.
But my eyes don’t leave Grey, and tears come to them as his legs give out. One of them raises a long sword over his head to finally deliver the killing blow.
I can’t let them kill him.
There’s only one way out of this, and it’s to do the one thing I said I never would again. It’s not for me but for Grey. He doesn’t deserve this.
I do what I’ve been wanting to since the orcs found me, or maybe since the last time I used it eight years ago.
I let go.
It’s so easy. No second thoughts. The cacophony of sound around me ceases in a split second. All I can hear is the crackling of the fire and Grey’s labored breathing.
The bodies hit the ground together in a single loud thud, and the orcs are no more.
Simple. Quick. Effortless.
I wriggle out from under the one that was on top of me, retching in the dirt before I collapse.
* * *
I tear at the chains, forgetting for a moment that this is not my true form. I remember what I am and shift back into myself, tearing out the arrows peppering my shoulders and back so that, hopefully, the healing can begin.
The Harbinger is unconscious on the ground across the camp. I pick myself up, the chains clattering to the bloody grass beneath me. I’m lightheaded from blood loss, but at least I won’t lose much more tonight. Most of the cuts and slices didn’t get too deep, thanks to my thick fur and scales. Now that I’ve shifted to my fae form, the wounds are already beginning to knit back together, and the only one that's bothering me is the crushed bones in my foot from where the orc trap snared me. But that, too, is repairing … just more slowly because of the iron that caused it.
I peer around the camp as I stumble towards her, limping badly. She’s not moving. Neither are the thirty or so orcs. They’re all dead and it took her less than a second. I stare into the still faces of the ones I shuffle past, almost not comprehending what I saw. I’d heard what the Harbinger could do, but I’d never seen it myself.
I reach her and stand over her, taking in the slow rise and fall of her chest. Relief courses through me. She’s alive.
I drop to my knees slowly, drawing her dress down where the Orc on top of her had raised it indecently. I glance at him and punch him in the side of his head with a vicious curse, even though he’s dead and can’t feel it. More’s the pity.
I’m already feeling stronger, so I gather up the Harbinger. At first I think to take her into one of the orc’s tents, but I can’t abide their stink. I don’t want their scents on her any more than they already are. It’s bad enough that I’ve had to take one of their shirts as I have none of my own clothes to wear.
I put her down gently and find a bag. I fill it with some food and grab a couple of waterskins and fur bedding before picking her back up and taking her from the clearing.
While I was following her, and before the orcs’ trap snapped around my paw like a pair of iron teeth, I passed a cave that smelled empty. I make for it, keeping my eyes and ears open for any creatures that might think we’re easy pickings now that the sun has set.
