Page 30 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

When she saw them peering down on her, she screamed at them both, demanding they get her free of the carriage. “You must get me out of here this instant!” she cried. “I cannot be trapped here any longer, do you hear?”

He supposed he should have been more sympathetic to the woman who was likely in a lot of pain, but he really thought a bit of politeness might have gone a long way. As it was, he felt as if they should just leave her there, and he said so to Gathren.

“So cavalier towards your own people, are you?” she said. “Well, I don’t know why I thought differently.”

“What will we do if we get her out?” he said. “Are you going to bear her on your horse? Are we going to leave her on the side of the road?”

Gathren rubbed her forehead, thinking this through. “I don’t know.”

“You can’t leave me here!” cried the woman from within the carriage.

“How are we even going to do it?” he said. “Is one of us going to climb in there and drag her out?”

“Perhaps,” said Gathren, “we could right the carriage and then get her out that way?”

“With her weight in it?”

“You don’t think so?”

They both surveyed the carriage, and Iahir wanted nothing more than to wash his hands of it all. But perhaps that was reprehensible. The woman was badly injured.

“All right,” he said, “perhaps I can lift the carriage and we can get her out through the other door. She is already down on that end anyway.”

“Worth a try,” said Gathren.

He was able to lift the carriage, though not enough to get at the door, possibly since the woman was resting against it.

However, the window on the door was shattered.

Gathren got down on her hands and knees and urged the woman to try to put her head and shoulders through the window.

“I can’t, oh, I can’t,” sobbed the woman.

“You have to,” said Gathren, “or we will simply leave you here. If you want out of this carriage, you must try to get free.”

The woman sobbed some more and did nothing.

Gathren crawled in closer and reached in through the shattered window.

Iahir’s arms were straining from holding the carriage up.

Gathren hauled the woman through, and the woman shrieked. “You’re an orc, don’t touch me, oh, don’t touch me!”

But Gathren pulled her free anyway, yanked out of there and dragged her over to the side of the road as the woman screamed and swore, saying that she’d been cut on the broken glass from the window, that this was the worst rescue attempt in all of time.

Gathren came back and helped him to lift the carriage. Together, they tried to rock it back up onto its wheels.

It was too heavy.

“Turn backwards?” Gathren wheezed. “Put our backs into it?”

Sweat was now streaming down his face. The place where he’d been stabbed in the shoulder was throbbing. “Worth a try,” he managed.

They did it.

The carriage rocked up.

Now, it was easy enough to push it off the road.