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Has Kian’s brother abandoned him? Are they going to retaliate by taking Kian’s head to his brother? To this Uli?
We cannot really trust anything these orcs are saying. They are liars, and I know they’re trying to get a rise out of Kian.
The general discusses something with the four other orcs, and when I look at Kian, I see a vein bulging at his temple.
“Kian,” I murmur anxiously. He snorts and pulls away from me. He tries to get to his knees but fails. He cries out when the general kicks him again. Kian shakes his head again and again.
“Kian, please!” The desperation in my voice makes the enemy orcs laugh.
I know the look on Kian’s face by now. It is the face he makes when his headaches start. The headaches that always arrive as soon as he tries to remember something from the past.
“Kian. Don’t push yourself. Not now,” I whisper under my breath. One of the four orcs who flank the general turns around and leaves.
Is he actually remembering something? Is he remembering something from the past? If that orc is right about his brother, won’t remembering just hurt him?
I wish we had the privacy for me to voice my hurried, anxious thoughts out loud.
The general orc is turned away when Kian whispers something.
“Everything will be okay.”
And then Kian laughs out loud.
This catches the general orc’s attention, and he turns furiously to see Kian laughing raucously as if he has just heard a dirty joke.
“My brother is no weakling! He is the chieftain of the great Risen Ash clan! We are one of the greatest clans to come to Earth from Kaynvu! He knows me, and he knows there is no way I will ever be a hostage!”
My body is frozen, and my skin prickles with anticipatory fear at the coming retaliation from the orc.
He must be pretending. Could he have gotten all his memories back this quickly? He has to be pretending not to have lost all his memories!
I decide to go along with Kian’s pretense and try to wipe all traces of fear off my face. I glare up at the general orc who looks furious.
Then the orc snarls and leans forward, looming over us.
“Your brother is a weakling. And so are you! And once we destroy the Risen Ash clan, we’ll send your body parts to all the other clans that we are going to conquer! Don’t lie to yourself, Kian! We have defeated you! You are a weakling!”
Kian doesn’t seem afraid but grins widely, wildly, before bursting into more laughter.
Or he is pretending not to be afraid,I think to myself. I look over to where Alfa is lying in a little hollowed space in the ground at the base of the tree.
As if she is half buried already.
I force myself to breathe, and I gulp up shallow breaths as quickly as I can.
Kian said that everything will be okay. You need to trust him.
“You are pathetic,” Kian says then. “And I am no weakling! I am a better warrior, a better fighter, and a more powerful general in the Risen Ash army than you ever will be! The truth is, you’ve spent all this time talking so that you don’t have to fight me!”
The general orc’s face has grown purple if that is even possible, and he spits several times before he speaks.
Kian continues laughing tauntingly, and I can only hope that this is part of his plan.
Although, how this could be part of his plan, I do not know.
The general orc roars with anger and grabs the trunk of a tree that is older than all of us combined and rips it out of the ground.
“I am no weakling!” he roars. The other orcs stand back, and the fear on their faces is obvious as their general goes on some kind of rampage.
