Did he really want to know? Normally, he would not have even asked this much, but he found himself drawn to Krujha more and more the longer they were alone together. He wanted to know his thoughts, something he had never cared to hear from anyone else.
Ignoring what that might have meant, Alwyn asked, “How so?”
Krujha didn’t answer right away. His face remained still and stern, which was an uncommon sight. He must have been deep in thought, so Alwyn waited.
“I think I’m unsettled by his attitude toward—well, all of this,” he finally said, brows still furrowed. “Far be it from me to tell him how he should feel, of course, but... I don’t know. I’ve spent the last two years trying to stop a war from breaking out. I guess it was easier to believe everyone in my clan had died than it is to believe some may have survived but chose to run away from the fight.”
Alwyn considered this. He also found the old orc’s reasoning not entirely convincing, but then he had never been in a situation like Jekha’s. His life wasn’t like most people’s, elf or orc, so he had long ago resigned himself to never being able to relate to most other people. The world he inhabited was a microcosm of the rest of the world, far too insulated for him to truly grasp what life was like for those outside it.
On that point, however, Alwyn could find common ground amongst himself, Krujha, and Jekha: they were all the exception, none of them living the life of an average person within their own cultures.
“I don’t fully understand it either,” he finally said, watching Krujha’s face. The orc didn’t look over at him, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “But I think perhaps we’re both too close to the matter to see it clearly.”
“Too close?” Krujha repeated, sounding unsure.
“We’ve both been involved in this war in some way for our whole lives, or close enough to it,” Alwyn said. Krujha finally glanced back at him as he spoke. The obvious conflict on his face made Alwyn hesitate, his heart stuttering in his chest; but after steeling himself, he continued on. “It’s not something I can walk away from. We’ve talked about this a bit already—you asked me what I would do if I wasn’t involved in any of this. I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it’s the same for you after all. Maybe we’re both too involved to see anything outside of it clearly.”
Krujha had flinched slightly at Alwyn’s remark about how the orc had challenged him. But he wasn’t trying to point to any kind of hypocrisy—if anything, it proved that they were both more alike than Alwyn realized.
Luckily, Krujha didn’t seem offended. Instead, that same pensive expression crossed his face again. He turned back around, and their horses trotted along in silence for several minutes.
“You’ve given me much to think about,” Krujha finally sighed. “But I think you might be on to something there.”
“Maybe it’s something you should think about, too—what you’d be doing if you weren’t involved in all this,” Alwyn said. He heard Krujha let out a faint huff of a chuckle.
“I bet we could come up with some ideas together,” Krujha said, a hint of that teasing lilt returning to his voice. He glanced back at Alwyn, and his grin had returned. Alwyn felt himself smiling back before he could stop himself. Heat flooded his face as Krujha’s eyes dropped to his lips, and he forced the smile down before Krujha could comment on it.
Krujha’s mood lightened after that, which made Alwyn strangely glad. It should not have mattered to him whether the orc was sad, but it would be easier to work with his usual cheerful self, he told himself.
The air remained cold, but it never snowed. At night, they slept huddled close to each other under Krujha’s tent, grateful for the shared warmth. In the morning, they would sit next to each other by the smoldering remains of their campfire, eat a small meal over light conversation, then hop on their horses and head out.
Alwyn waited for the next disaster to strike, but it never came—and a few days later, as they crested a wooded hill, the walls of Drol Kuggradh were visible in the distance. Several campsites were set up along the outer walls of the city, surrounding it with swathes of multicolored tents and the haze of countless campfires. Many clans came to Drol Kuggradh in the winter, Alwyn recalled, to weather out the coldest months together and share their resources. Within its walls, most of the city was made up of tents and small buildings built of stone or clay, only a single story or two at the most.
Near the north end of the city, though, a tower jutted up from the rest: not a castle, but it was where the King and his husband now ruled. It was modest compared to the splendor of Castle Aefraya, but it stood taller than anything else in Drol Kuggradh—standing out in a way that Alwyn couldn’t quite decide was cohesive or obtrusive. As the only true city in a culture of nomads, there was an eclectic mix of architecture with no real structure to the paths and walkways within. The tower standing out from the rest of the city somehow made it all the more fitting.
“There it is,” Krujha said, as they paused at the peak, looking down into the valley. “We made it.”
“Not quite yet,” Alwyn said, though he couldn’t hide the relief in his voice. Krujha laughed, grinning down at him.
“I suppose you’re right. Still a little ways to go,” he said, nudging his horse back into a trot. “Let’s not waste any time then, hm?”
They were riding through the walls later in the afternoon. There was a strange sense of tension interspersed with the relief that Alwyn felt being back in a city. And there were many more elves here than he had been expecting. At first he saw only orcs as they entered, but the closer they got to the tower, the more mixed the population became.
He expected to only see elves within the military outpost stationed beside the tower; but these elves seemed to be actively living within Drol Kuggradh as citizens, not just soldiers. He had never considered such a life. These must have been some of the more adventurous elves, then, or those who didn’t fit into elven society for one reason or another. Many appeared to be merchants, which was unsurprising, considering how trade between them had boomed in the past year. Some, though, looked like any worker one might find on the street back in Aefraya—artisans and laborers alike, working alongside the orc population of the only city in the wildlands.
The sight made something stir in him—something he couldn’t quite name, couldn’t quite place—except that it made his face warm and his chest tighten.
Krujha seemed oblivious to the peculiarity of the scene, or perhaps the sight was not as surprising to him, since he had been in Drol Kuggradh more recently. He was whistling as their horses carried them through the spread-out city and up the hill toward the tower, where they could report to Gorza. Alwyn watched the way the muscles of his arms shifted and flexed as he rode, the afternoon light on his green skin painting him a warm sage.
He caught himself staring before Krujha did, and forced himself to look away. There were a hundred more important things he should have been thinking about, he chided himself.
That familiar tension inside him returned in slow waves as they passed through the gate that led to the military outpost, dismounting from their horses so two elven stable boys could tend to them. He wished he could let the mask fall over him instantaneously, the way it seemed to for Krujha. Instead, it felt like his face was slowly morphing into stone, desperately clinging to the elven stoicism that would be expected of a High Sorcerer.
When they ducked into the command tent to announce their arrival, Alwyn half expected to see Commander Petkas, who had been originally stationed in Drol Kuggradh; but it was a different elf waiting for them, a stern-looking woman who was entirely unimpressed by their story.
“I will alert Gorza of your arrival,” she said simply when they finished. “For now, report to the quartermaster for your barracks assignment. You’ll be summoned when she’s available to see you.”
The quartermaster assigned them rooms right next to each other. The barracks were clean and newly built, but housed small rectangular rooms with narrow beds, a single chest, a chair, a small table, and nothing else. Alwyn deposited his belongings with a sigh. At least he could wash his clothes, and they could resupply.
