Honor Among Orcs (Orc Saga) (15 page)

“Then perhaps they’ll be waiting on the other side,” she said, watching him now that she was certain he did not watch her. “With wine.”

“Mead, perhaps. We cannot grow grapes of our own in the mountains. The elves have vines, of course, but wine is not often offered in trade.”

“Oh.” She picked another piece of cotton grass from her gown. She’d had mead before, but it left her feeling muzzy after a single glass. “You still did not say—are you a hunter?”

He smiled, nodding to the rabbit. “As you see.”

“I mean for your village.”

“No.”

Her eyes narrowed at the shortness of his tone. “A scout?”

He shook his head and her stomach twisted. He had made her so many promises, but if he had no standing in his village… Was this why he had tried so hard to discourage her? “Are you a thrall?”

His forehead creased. “Thrall?”

“A—slave, I suppose. Tied to the land.”

“No,” he said, laughter rippling beneath the word. “Though if I were, I wonder what you believe our warriors to be?”

She flushed, brushing impatiently at the cotton motes. “Well why else would you be so stiff about telling me, unless you were dishonored, somehow.”

“I am not that, either,” he assured her.

“Then what?”

He glanced at her sidelong, and she felt his hesitation as if it were her own. But he straightened, the tension leaving his shoulders “I am Gothi of the Hrimthursar. We are named for the rime, for we live in the coldest reaches of the mountains. My people are the strongest of the orc clans.”

“Gothi?” she repeated, staring at him. She felt muzzy now, even without the mead. All those times he had spoken of his people. He meant
his
people. The sedge beneath her seemed to tilt. “You’re a king?”

“The leader of my clan.” He bared his tusks. “Surely it is not so difficult to believe.”

“No!” she said. “No, it isn’t that I can’t believe it. It’s only—” she felt her face burning hot. She had treated him so… And wanted… His people would never allow their king to marry a human girl. Even a princess with a drop of exiled elf blood. Not after how he had been abused, tortured. By her own father, for all they knew.

And then the sedge tilted again, even more sharply, and her breath came short. A king needed an heir. And Bolthorn was no youth.

What if he already had a wife?

“Forgive me,” she whispered, the blood draining from her face as quickly as it had come. “I didn’t realize.”

He did not like the way she looked at him then, her eyes cast down as if she had not earned the right. As if they had not traveled side by side, taking comfort from each other. As if they were not bonded heart to heart and mind to mind, their thoughts laughing together. By any standard of his people, they were even more closely bound than husband and wife.

“Arianna,” he caught her chin, tipping her face up to his. “I am still orc.”

“Yes.” She pressed her lips together and a strange pain made crow’s feet around her eyes. “And I am still human and weak, and—” she stopped herself, turning her face away. “We should eat and bank the fire, my lord Orc.”

The words struck him like a kick to the gut, more painful than the knife wound in his side. “We are bound, Princess. Gothi or not, our hearts beat together.”

“If you had been a man, the king would have gifted me to you, commanded me to obey as if you spoke with his voice and beaten me if I did not please you. I would be your property and your servant.” She met his eyes, her expression bleak and bare as winter branches. “Never your equal.”

“Then it is a good thing I am not a man,” he said. And a better thing that her father was dead, or he would rend him limb from limb. “Orcs do not suffer subservience. Even the Gothi is only the first among equals, a speaker for his people, but not the only voice. The Hrimthursar are not yoked under my leadership, nor would I ever have them so.”
Nor you. Never you.

“But I am not orc, Bolthorn.”

“Perhaps not yet,” he growled, though he did not quite know why he was so angry. “But as long as your strength feeds mine and the blood oaths bind us, it is your will alone that prevents you from becoming so. And then what will you hold up between us?”

“Is not your honor thick enough?” Her voice was cool but her eyes flashed. “You do not even tell me what any of it means, yet I am supposed to believe myself your equal? We are bound, body and blood, and I understand nothing!”

He rose, propelled to his feet by his own frustration. “It was for your safety. It is still for your safety! Even the little you know now would be a danger, if you were taken.”

“To your people.”

He spun back to face her. “To you, Arianna! What would your father have done to know what you know? To learn even the little you have discovered about blood magic and blood oaths?” He knew already, for Gunnar had gone far to extract Bolthorn’s own knowledge, and strong as Arianna was, she would not have lasted. She could not have even survived. Was not the queen’s fate proof enough of that? “He would have destroyed you. Bit by bit, piece by piece.”

“He is dead, Bolthorn.” She said it without emotion, but he did not miss the pain in her heart. It tightened around his own. “And if it is as you say, that I need only will it to be orc, then why do you still deny me? Have I not the right to know what I would become?”

She must know, before she chose. But if he told her now, if she chose to remain in Gautar… He turned his face away and closed his eyes. He was not certain he had the strength to leave her if she asked it, yet to take her through the mountain against her will would be foul beyond measure.

The fabric of her gown rustled softly against the pillowed sedge grass and her hand, warm and light, touched his arm. “Forgive me,” she said. “I should not question you.”

“No.” He blew out a breath of frustration and looked down at her where she stood at his side, her head bowed. “If you did not question me, I would fear for your health, Princess. And what you ask is only right. But I—” He swallowed the words, that she would not be influenced by pity, and began again. “I beg your forgiveness, for not speaking of it before now.”

Then he was married. He must be, or why else would he have kept so much from her? He was married, but he had not dared to tell her, for fear she would not help him if she knew. She drew back, feeling her stomach twist into knots. That was why he had pushed her away in the cave, why he had stopped himself again that morning. He meant to give her only enough to keep her at his side until he had no more need of her.

She tripped over an especially dense hummock of grasses, but Bolthorn steadied her, his hand lingering at her waist. “Come.”

He rolled a rock back from the edge of the fire and urged her to sit before crouching beside it. The flames popped as grease dripped from the rabbit and Bolthorn grunted, removing it carefully from the spit. He divided it into unequal halves and offered her the larger portion with a piece of shale for a plate.

She stared at the meat, but her stomach roiled too much, and even the smell made her ill.

“You asked me once, what it meant that our thoughts laughed together,” he said quietly, placing a skin of water at her feet and settling beside her. “Among my people, it almost always results in a binding.”

A binding. She glanced at him, but caught no hint of his meaning from his face. His fingers picked at the carcass and he did not look at her. Almost always, he’d said.

“And for those who are not bound?”

He twisted one shoulder. “Between races, it is not so simple a thing. The elves exile those among them who join with orcs, for any child born is considered tainted by our blood.” His jaw tightened at the last words, and his gaze did not move from the fire. “We are a reminder to them of things they would prefer to forget, but to us, these children are treasured. They are our redemption, our hope that we might yet become something more than twisted, fallen creatures. Perhaps one day, we might be welcomed back among the elves.”

She was not certain she wanted to know what the elves would think of a human half-blood. Perhaps that was why they were left behind. “But you said the bond was a gift.”

“Among the orcs it is seen as one. Among the elves it is a curse. Sometimes, the resentment is so great, those so joined cannot bear to look at one another. The Elvish women, if they have refused the bond, might leave to live among the Vala. The Elvish men might become nomads or traders. It is a hard life for them, filled with sorrow.”

The rabbit, though tender and well-cooked, tasted of ash on her tongue and it settled like stone in her stomach. “Have I the right to refuse?”

Silence weighed heavily between them and his shoulders bowed. “You had the right.”

Had.
Her heart beat strangely in her chest. “No longer?”

“You wove our lives together with the vow you made, Arianna.” He met her eyes then, his own dark with something she could not discern. “By the customs of my people, you have bound yourself as my wife.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Her lips moved, but no sound carried.

“I should have told you sooner,” he said, searching her face for some sign of her feelings. Her heart raced, he knew, but that could be anger as easily as pleasure or fear. He prayed to the Ancestors it was not fear. “I hoped that you might come to—” his throat thickened, and the only word that came was not the one which he had wanted. “Forgive me.”

She closed her eyes and her whole body wilted. “You’re not married.”

He almost laughed, so unexpected were the words. “I have no other bride but you.”

“I thought—” she shook her head and then her eyes flashed open again. “But we cannot be married!”

“There is no breaking the bond between us now. I know it is not what you might have chosen, but I would not limit you. I would make you happy, give you every freedom, if you would only let me. I would honor you, Princess, for all that you have done, and you would lead at my side as Gythja. In time, perhaps,” his voice broke on the word, his heart lurching against his ribs. “Perhaps one day, you might love me.”

“But your people,” she said, her face white. “If you are a king, you need a strong heir. Our children would be weakened by my blood. You said yourself the mountains are too cold, that I might not survive the journey.”

“Our children would be hope, Arianna, a great blessing from the Ancestors, honored for the human blood they carried.”

“Even after what the king did?” She shook her head again. “You bear the marks of his lash, you know what we are, how I was raised! How could you want that? How could your people want that for their queen?”

“It is already done. The moment I knew your heart and recognized the bond we shared, though I did not wish to admit it, at first, even to myself. But after the days we have spent together, I see why the Ancestors brought us together. Had you not married me, I would still have brought you to my village and hoped you might stay as my wife, begged at your feet if I had to.”

“Because of your Ancestors?”

“Because if you left me, I would be less than a ghost in this body. My heart would not beat without yours, Princess.”

“No.” She opened her hand, staring at her scarred palm. “I suppose it wouldn’t.”

“There is room for love between us, Arianna. Outside of the vows that bind us. We need only nurture the flame together.”

“There is so much blood, Bolthorn,” she said, her voice ragged with emotion. “So much blood between us, how can it not smother even the embers?”

The boots were slightly too large, but Arianna trimmed small pieces from the fur—a bear of some kind, he had noticed, when he saw it in proper light—and together with grasses, tucked them into the toes, filling the extra length. She walked for a short while, despite his objections, her forehead creased deeply and her gaze on the ground beneath her feet. He let her, until the stitch in his side grew into a dull ache and she stumbled more than she stepped, for she seemed to need some distance between them to sort her thoughts.

There had been more than just their bond to discuss beside the fire, but the moon had risen, and the sooner they reached the shelter of the passage, the safer they both would be. To his relief, she did not argue his desire to continue on, nor suggest they turn back, and a great pressure eased from his chest after they had left their little camp behind.

“Tell me the rest,” she said, after he had wrapped her in the fur and lifted her into his arms. And so, while they walked, he spoke cautiously of his people and their ways. She said very little in response, but from the way she watched him, he was certain that she listened. He told her, too, of the elves, and the dragons who hid themselves in the smoking chambers of the deepest veins of melted rock.

And the magic. Not all that he knew, for as Gothi, much was too sacred to share, but he told her of spells woven into cloth and hammered into steel, and how the dragons could bend the earth itself to their will.

“They call the earth their mother,” he added. “And the sky their father. The dragons serve no other Ancestors.”

“And the elves?” she asked. “Do they only serve the earth and the sky?”

“They honor their Ancestors, but above all, their king, Ingvifreyr, who knew the paths through the sky before they were closed to us. It is still a great grief to the elves that Ingvifreyr was lost to them.”

“Did he die?”

“No.” A great grief not only to the elves, he realized with a grimace. “Ingvifreyr traded himself to bring the stolen elves from darkness and slavery. They became the first orcs, once freed from Sinmarra’s power, too twisted and tortured to be elves anymore. Ingvifreyr saved my people.”

They both trudged on in silence, for Bolthorn’s throat was thick with his own sorrow. Had Ingvifreyr returned, the orcs would have had a different future. They would have been more than just guardians of the mountains, exiled from the Elvish lands of Nericia and Vindblainn, and the forest of Tiveden. They would have been welcomed home.

“You never told me why the mirror obeyed my blood,” she said into the stillness, her head upon his shoulder.

He snorted. “Your father’s blood runs through your veins, Princess. Though I suppose, it could have been your mother’s blood, just as easily. Perhaps it was both.”

She shivered, and when he glanced down, her face had turned moonlight-white. “No wonder you were so certain I was a princess. But it is not proof that I was the king’s daughter.”

“Do you doubt it?”

“Perhaps I wish to believe otherwise. For the sake of any children I might have, that they would not be cursed for my sin.”

He grunted, considering her words, and even more carefully, his own. He could not reassure her about the king, for he had not lied when he said she shared his nose, and Gunnar’s reasoning for believing her another man’s child had seemed to him built of paranoia and madness. But...

“What if your children were orc, Princess?”

Her fingers, worrying a loose thread within the cloak, stilled completely.

“As Hrimthursar, the king’s ghost would have no claim upon their fate. Your children would be freed of any guilt, and what there is of yours—I have already promised you that I would take the stain upon my own spirit, for it was in my service you acted.”

“But not in your service alone,” she said quietly. “I acted for myself as much as I did you. If I had not helped you to escape, aided in his murder...”

“It is not wrong to want to save yourself from suffering. And what he wanted would have meant worse than that for you. You would have been his tool, kept alive only for your blood, for the power it granted him. And had you not possessed as much as he desired, it would have meant your death. You had the right to act in your own defense, and the duty to do what you must to protect your people.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “I pray the Ancestors will see it so, and grant me some forgiveness, even if the king never will. It is not as though I had done anything to earn his cruelty, before now. It was just my living at all that offended him. Perhaps the Ancestors will see the scars upon my body and believe I have been punished enough, already.”

It was no comfort at all to him, but he would not take that small bit of hope from her, if it gave her peace. And when she was Hrimthursar, she would at least have the protection of his own Ancestors.

“Gunnar did not deserve so fine a daughter.”

But nor did Bolthorn deserve so fine a wife.

One more reason to leave Gautar, to disappear beyond the mountains and never return, for surely among the orcs, the king’s ghost could not reach her to do any further harm. Surely as Bolthorn’s wife—

Bolthorn’s wife. With Bolthorn’s children? She touched the healing skin of her palm where their blood had mixed, burning hot as she swore her vow. It was everything she wanted for all the wrong reasons. In her ignorance, she had tied him to her, what else could he say now but that they might make the best of it? And why, knowing what he had, did he turn from her, if he had wanted her always as his wife?

Bolthorn had left her on a boulder to watch from safety while he climbed up the loose shale and crumbling rock in search of the passage. His fingers clawed grooves in the solid stone, the strong muscle of his shoulders bunching as he hauled himself up another face. The power of his body stunned her, for she had never truly seen him work, and even more incredible was his control of it. He had never held her too tightly, never so much as squeezed her hand too hard, yet he turned rock into dust. Perhaps that was reason enough for his discipline.

He glanced to the east, squinting at the sky, and then dropped lightly to his feet, though he had hung just a moment before from a ledge four times his height.

“I must wait for the sun to rise,” he called as he slid down the last incline. “There is too much shadow yet to find the entrance.”

She drew her knees up to her chest, tucking the fur around her feet. The rabbit skin boots were warm, but they had climbed high enough that snow clung in white patches on the black earth. “No wonder you were so sure of yourself at the waterfall.”

His tusks winked in the dark. “I am Hrimthursar. We climb ice as often as rock.”

She tried not to think of the kiss they had shared. The one he had broken. But her face flushed with the memory of his fingers curled in her hair, the soft brush of his lips and the spice of his mouth. If he believed he could love her, why had he pushed her away?

“You are quiet, Princess.”

“The nights grow longer,” she said.

“And the blush in your cheeks?”

Her face grew hotter still, and she cursed his vision. Was there nothing he could not see in the dark?

“Tell me what I must do to convince you,” he said, his voice low and rough. “I would have your trust, at least, even if love is impossible.”

She lifted her head, searching the gold of his eyes. “Not impossible, Bolthorn. Never that. But I never wanted it this way. We were supposed to be free, you and I. Instead, I am your burden. Sick and weak, and so foolish. Your people will laugh at me when they learn the truth.”

“My people will honor you for your courage and sacrifice in the protection of their Gothi.” His fingers brushed against her cheek. “And they will admire you for the risk you took in binding us together. You might have died as easily as woken me, you know. If my wound had been mortal, my death would have become yours.”

“You see?” she said, pulling his hand away. “Foolish!”

“Brave,” he told her, squeezing her hand. “Since the day you found me, you have shown nothing but courage.”

She laughed, short and sharp. “I was hiding from Lord Alviss. I would not call that courage of any kind.”

“Sometimes I think you trusted me more then, when I was only a nameless monster in the glass. Am I so awful now that you know me?”

Her fingers closed tight around his hand and she leaned in, hiding her face against his chest. He smelled of earth and stone, and even in the cold, he was so warm. Because he was Hrimthursar and orc and bred for the rime and the snow, he would say. She could even hear the laughter in his voice.

“Not awful,” she mumbled against his skin. “Wonderful and strong and steady, always steady.”