Page 1 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

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GATHREN AP NALRAG was making this up as she went along.

However, it was going pretty well thus far if she did say so herself. “In the wake of the High King’s death,” she was saying, “you’ll send word to my father that you have me. This way, you can threaten my safety and control my father’s attack on the capital city. You’ll be able to stop wholesale destruction by the orc armies.”

Gathren was the only orc in a room full of elves, high ranking Valaedor elves at that, one of which was the son of an envivtain. The room was a sitting room, the walls light-colored, a wide window letting in the afternoon light over the clean lines of the understated furniture where they all sat.

“Well, someone must send word,” said one of the elves, a man named Marthlis. It was his house and his sitting room where they were all gathered, scheming about how to assassinate the High King of Lothnehil. “But I don’t know who that should be. Who can communicate with the orcs?”

“Perhaps we ought not have sent off that other one, the orc commander,” said the son of the envivtain, whose name was Iahir. He had light blond hair cut to hit at his cheekbones. It fell over his pretty, elfin features. He was smoking a silver pipe. He also kept looking at Gathren in a way that she didn’t really like, a leering sort of way, his gaze lingering too long on her curves. Perhaps she ought to be used to it by now, because she was often one of the few women in groups of mostly men, and men had a tendency to gape at her, no matter how tightly she bound her ample breasts against her chest. Being used to a thing, in any case, did not make it palatable.

“No, you would not have found that one easy to work with,” said Gathren, who had used the orc commander, Dathor, to get into this room, and then cut him out of everything. She worked better alone. “It will be much easier to simply deal with me.”

“You have volunteered to be a hostage,” said Iahir. “We cannot use you to communicate with the orcs. You have to be held captive, which means that you cannot leave. You do understand what it means to be a hostage?” He raised his blond eyebrows at her, his voice patronizing.

She lifted her chin at him. “I know you elves labor under the surety that we orcs are all incredibly stupid, and I find that assumption serves me rather well much of the time, so I suppose I shan’t disabuse you of it. Yes, indeed, I have come to volunteer to be a hostage, but I have no idea what a hostage is.”

Iahir smirked. “Have I mentioned that I like her?”

“Liking her or not, the problem has not been dealt with,” said Marthlis. “How do we communicate with the orcs?”

“I can tell you where to take a letter to get it to my father,” she said, “who to bring it to. That is no worry.”

She actually couldn’t.

She had made this hostage business up in the moment. It had not been her plan, not exactly. Her plan had been only to get close enough to assassinate the High King, and she recognized that the elves were not going to give her that access for nothing.

She would have to give them something in return. When she and Dathor had come here in the first place, they had thought to trade in information—they would tell the elves when the orc army was coming and in return, the elves would get them close to the High King, who these elves opposed. These elves were revolutionaries. The orcs were attacking the elves for vengeance, primarily, but they were sort of revolutionaries, too, in a way. It seemed they could work together.

But the information angle was not enough, and she could see that. So, she had told the elves they could hold her hostage, and that her presence here would be enough to sway the orc High Chieftain, her father.

It was a lie.

Well, a lie insofar as that her presence would sway the High Chieftain. He was her father, but he paid her no mind, and he barely knew she existed. He had sown her in her mother’s belly years ago and never had any contact with her again, not until Gathren had made her way to Arzakh and presented herself to him.

Eventually, they’d figure out she had been lying. She knew that. She needed that to be after the High King was dead.

“Right, then,” said Marthlis. “Who?”

“First,” she said, “I need to be assured that we can actually get close to the High King.”

“I am in his personal guard,” said Iahir. “As I have said, I am close enough to him. I guard him while he sleeps, sweep the room hourly as he snores in his bed. I can kill him any time we want.”

“Well, when are you going to do it?” she said. She did not need to be the person who killed the High King, whose name was Findas, herself. She was happy enough to let Iahir do it, but she wanted it done soon.

“That is precisely what we are trying to determine,” said Marthlis. “But this is not so easy as simply stabbing him in his sleep.”

“It really is,” said Iahir. “I have volunteered for it. We meet often. Every time we meet, I say, I can do it whenever we wish, any time at all, and it’s never the right time.” He puffed on his silver pipe, giving Gathren a look that seemed to indicate he thought they were on the same side.

She wanted to glare at him, but she forced herself not to. She needed to keep these men’s favor, after all.

“I thought we must time it with the invasion of the orc forces,” said another of the elves in the room, one whose name Gathren had not gotten. “Is that not what the other one said?”

“Our forces are coming soon,” said Gathren. “There’s no reason to delay. But I must be there, and I must see that it has happened. Once I have seen Findas’s body myself, then I will relinquish myself as hostage and tell you how to contact my father.” There, she thought, that’s quite a good plan. I just came up with it now, but I feel as if it’s as brilliant as if I’d been planning it for weeks.

She was not really good at planning things for weeks, she had to admit. What she was good at was seeing an opportunity and seizing it. She acted quickly and decisively, and it had served her well for much of her life.

“Your demands keep changing,” muttered Marthlis to Gathren. “But then, what can we expect, dealing with orcs?”