Honor Among Orcs (Orc Saga) (28 page)

Home.

Was it odd that she had never missed the castle? Nor Gautar itself. Even when she had believed him dead, she had not truly wanted to go back. From the moment she had begun this journey, Bolthorn had felt like home.

“I never meant to cost you so much,” she said.

He sighed into her hair, wrapping his arms around her. “It is nothing I would not have given freely. And for what I asked of you—it is only right that I must pay a price in return. I only wish we might have begun differently, with peace instead of blood.”

“Vanadis said you only ever dreamed of peace.” She leaned into his arms, tipping her head back to see his face. From that angle, it was mostly jaw, and the tattoo on his throat that matched her own, the skin flushed greener beneath the mark. “That was why I would have gone. To give you peace, even if it came too late.”

“If you wanted it, I would find a way to take you back. Even now.”

She shook her head. “Even without magic, they would look at me and see a witch. I could never be their princess now, Bolthorn, or their queen, even if I wished to be.” She twisted in his arms, her fingers following the marks on his cheek. “I think I made my choice that day you pulled me through the mirror. The day I came back to you. I would always have it so.”

“Locked in a mirror?” he teased.

“Hand outstretched to help me through.”

He caught her hand and kissed her fingertips. “Even when you do not wish to reach for me, my hand will be open, waiting for yours.”

“Then there is nothing else to want.”

Except she thought later, very quietly, as the purple twilight of day turned into the black of night, a little bit of sun. Bolthorn’s love burned hot and bright, but she did not think she would ever stop missing the light.

She tried to tell herself it was not so dark the next day when they left the cave to climb the mountain, but the shadows gave the lie, so deep they nearly swallowed Bolthorn whole. She understood now, why he saw so well at night. Perhaps their child would be born with Bolthorn’s eyes. She hoped so, because without his hand in hers, she would have lost him before they began.

“I cannot even be certain it is tomorrow, yet,” she murmured, following him through the snow.

He chuckled low. “In winter we keep time by the moon and stars. It is not quite the same, but it serves well enough to measure the nights. And we remember sunrise, even when it is dark. Did Vanadis or the Gythja not tell you so?”

She shook her head. “I gave up on telling one day from the next while I was ill in the caverns, and then after—” It was not something she ever wished to feel again, but just thinking of it made her ache. She rubbed her chest, digging the heel of her hand into the place over her heart. “It did not seem to matter, if you were dead. I slept when the Vala told me it was time and rose when she asked it of me. Inside the mountain, there is no sunlight, winter or not.”

It was two day’s journey from the village to the edge of the forest the Vidthursar claimed as their own, and but for the snow, it would have been easy. The Gythja had given them food enough, and skins of water and mead, that they need not even hunt. But the farther they walked, the thicker the snow had fallen. Arianna fell behind Bolthorn when it rose above her knees, letting him break a path for the both of them. When it reached her hips, even Bolthorn slowed, and though the cloak kept her warm, her legs felt leaden.

“It will add another day at least,” she said, grasping his belt for balance. Rime had formed even over the linen shirt he wore, reflecting what little light there was and biting cold and sharp against her fingers. She released his belt as quickly as she could, her skin sticking to the ice, and tucked her hands beneath her arms to warm them.

He grunted, trudging through a drift that nearly reached his hips, and stomping to pack the snow. “It will not last. Outside of the forest, it is too cold for much snow.”

Too cold for snow. She pulled the cloak more tightly around her and ducked her head beneath the hood. At least her face did not hurt so much, too numb from the wind to sting and itch. Even with Fossegrim’s cloak, she must be careful of her face. Bolthorn did not seem to suffer frostbite, for all he was coated with ice, but if she did not keep the hood up and her head down, her nose and cheeks would freeze on the mountain. Her eyelashes were already sticking together from the frost of her breath and the moisture of her eyes.

“What do the Hrimthursar do in winter?” she asked, following the path he had made through the drift. “If they do not dare trade or travel.”

“Hunt mostly,” he said. “But game is scarce, and everything we find is shared equally during the darkest month. The rest of the year, it does not matter so much, though often if there is an elk or a bear, it is shared anyway. One orc cannot eat so much meat.

“And the women?”

Bolthorn grinned over his shoulder. “You forget orc women need not spend their days hidden in a tower. Why should they not also hunt? Or if they have not the heart for it, there are traps and snares to check to bring that game back to the village, and clothing to make, though orc men are not afraid to do their own knitting and mending. Nothing more is asked of anyone when there is no sun.”

“Then we could spend our days together?”

“We could,” he said slowly. “But I fear it will be too cold for you to hunt with me, even with the cloak, and there is much climbing involved.” He glanced back again, his eyes winking yellow light. “Unless you have lost your fear of it?”

“I’m not afraid of climbing,” she said, sounding stubborn even to herself. She wrinkled her nose and hunched deeper into her cloak. “I’m only afraid of falling.”

Bolthorn laughed, the sound so loud it startled snow from the bare limbs above them, then he laughed again when she cursed a clump for landing on her head. She pressed her lips together and gave him a narrow look, but, still chuckling, he only bent.

“Come, Princess. I will give you a ride through the worst of this, if you trust me not to drop you.”

She bit her lip, staring at his back with longing. She almost wished she could blame the fever for her exhaustion still, but it was only from a long day climbing through banks of snow. She shivered at the rime he wore more comfortably than his clothes.

“You’re too frozen to hold.”

“It will melt beneath the cloak,” he assured her, though he broke some ice from his shoulders. “Then you will keep us both warm.”

He was right of course, and somehow, when the rime melted from his back and neck, it did not seem to dampen her clothes, and when she wrapped the cloak around his shoulders as well as her own, to keep her fingers warm on his chest, it fit them both.

“Fossegrim does fine work with winter wool,” Bolthorn said, “Even Vanadis does not realize his skill, for he has never flaunted it. But if it came to that, old or not, Fossegrim would win the fight.”

She was not sure if it was meant to reassure her, but she did not like to think what might bring Fossegrim and Vanadis to blows. Nothing good could come of it, she was certain.

“What about Sinmarra?”

“Ah,” Bolthorn sighed. “No, he could not win against Sinmarra. She is too strong, gorged with power from the blood she stole.”

“What blood?”

“Elvish blood, Princess. From before she turned us into orcs. We were to be her army, slaves to her will, but for the grace of Ingvifreyr. It is why Hjalli had to let you stay with Fossegrim, and why the Gythja is so angry with her husband for forcing you to go. It is why this plan of Vanadis’s for your people must fail. May the Ancestors keep the truth of it all from Ingvifreyr—to see his wife succumb, and then to lose his sister to the same lust...”

His wife. “You never said. I never realized—Sinmarra was the elf-king’s wife?”

Bolthorn grunted. “Before her exile.”

“But what could she have done?”

He was silent for a long moment, watching his feet far more carefully than was needful. “Did you never wonder why the Ancestors linger? Why they require our offerings and supplication, if they are to have any peace?”

“We are taught it is for our sakes. They desire to see their children flourish, and the gifts we give are for their blessings.” Arianna pressed her face into his shoulder to warm her nose, careful of her still-swollen cheek. “Is it not so, among your people?”

“No,” he said, the word half-broken. “The elves tell of a time when our Ancestors were free. When the hidden ways were still open, and in death, we were free to walk them as we could never be in life. But Sinmarra felt it should be otherwise. She was furious that Ingvifreyr would share the lands beyond with humankind, just as he had shared other magics, other knowledge. She feared, I think, that your people would become too powerful, were they given such a gift. She destroyed the skyways, and trapped us all. It was only after that she realized she had trapped herself, too, and began to steal the elves to amass the power she needed to escape.”

Twice, then, they had lost their freedom. And no wonder that Ingvifreyr had felt it his duty to free the stolen elves. But Vanadis, to betray her brother’s sacrifice in such a way. She wished she could forget all of it, everything Vanadis had wanted. She wished she need never think of it again. She had not crossed the mountain with Bolthorn only to face the same troubles on the other side as those she had left behind.

“When you promised me I would be free here, I did not understand how much it meant, nor how grave a thing it was for Vanadis to take it from me.”

“To steal freedom is the greatest of wrongs, among orc or elf. But no orc will ever forget what came of it when it was tried.” Then his voice hardened, fierce with fury. “We would turn upon the elves before we let them enslave a race, and magic or not, we would win. We would win, or die in the trying.”

Her fingers closed tightly in his tunic, her stomach twisting with his words. Bolthorn had only wanted peace and instead, now, her people had been threatened with slavery.

“It will not come to that,” she promised him. “I am safe with you, and marked as Hrimthursar. She cannot use me to manipulate my people as long as we are together. She has no power over me while you live.”

No matter what came, Vanadis would not win.

Bolthorn let her words reassure him. She was right, after all. As long as Arianna remained at his side, in his arms, Vanadis had no power over either of them, and it was impossible that Arianna would agree to help the Vala now, knowing what Vanadis had planned for her people. He could not imagine Vanadis crossing the mountain herself either, though he still did not understand what purpose it would serve to turn the humans into slaves. The elves could not wish to keep them as servants, even if they might do so without the orcs learning the truth—in itself, near impossible. Perhaps Fossegrim would learn something, but Vanadis’s reasons did not matter to Bolthorn so long as she failed, and where better than among the Hrimthursar to be certain that she did?

Even if he was not Gothi any longer, he and Arianna could watch for her. With Isolfur they could even slip back over the mountain to be certain Arianna’s people were well and safe. The elders would not need to know what he did or where he went, and the humans on the other side would never know they had come and gone. Arianna need not be banished from her home altogether, and she would be freer to return as she wished if she were not Gythja.

But if Vanadis acted, what then? He grimaced to himself, trudging through the snow. As Gothi he could move against her more easily. He could alert the whole clan. Over ten thousand eyes watching, waiting, ready to stop her. And as Gythja, Arianna might call upon that same protection, if need be. He did not think Vanadis would truly attempt to steal her a second time, to divide them, but if something happened to him—and there was always a danger of it, so high up the mountain—she would be safer as Gythja than as the widow of a hunter.

And Vanadis had already tried to kill him once. Perhaps twice, if she had purposely revealed Arianna to him on the mountain, thinking he would climb to his death to reach her. How many more attempts would he survive? And what reason did Arianna have to stay among the orcs if he died?