Honor Among Orcs (Orc Saga) (31 page)

“You will not touch my wife.” Bolthorn stepped in the Vala’s path when she reached for Arianna and he felt his wife’s relief in the clutch of her fingers on his arm. “You will not see her unless I stand beside her, nor speak with her unless she wishes it.”

Vanadis sighed. “Really, Bolthorn. Your mistrust wounds me. I sought only to protect her, to keep her safe. You know the humans cannot survive this cold.”

“And yet she has,” he said.

“Arianna, please,” Vanadis said, craning her neck to see around him. “Won’t you let me heal you, at least?”

Arianna’s nails dug into his skin, but she did not cower behind him. She only lifted her chin. “I am well enough, Vala. Better, I think, without your help.”

Vanadis drew back, shaking her head. “You see,” she said to Eistla and Hyndla. “After I saved her life. These humans—they do not understand us. And even after all that I have done, she turns your son against me, Eistla. I hoped, perhaps, if I only kept them apart, the Hrim-Gothi would be freed. Perhaps he would see clearly enough for reason. And poor Bolvarr! She led him to his doom.”

“Enough,” Bolthorn growled.

She flicked her fingers in a helpless gesture, her shoulders curving. “Forgive me, Bolthorn. It is hard for you to hear this truth, I know, but you must see the sense in it.”

Every muscle in his body yearned to strike at her, but Arianna’s hand held him back, reminded him of his place. Of all they risked. He turned his attention to his mother instead.

“Bolvarr?”

Eistla shook her head, her lips pursed as her gaze slid from him to the Vala. “We have heard nothing since he left for the passage. Grimnir and Hrimnir were with him, as well as Fenja, and several younger warriors.”

“Bolvarr crossed through the mountain and met an army on the other side. He was slaughtered before he had a chance to speak his name.”

“And how can you know?” Arianna asked. “Did you follow him? Or is his death the same trick as Bolthorn’s was? You said he was killed by the king’s men, too. That a war had begun, and Bolthorn died defending his people.”

Vanadis gave her a pitying look. “Those were your nightmares, Princess. Fevered dreams.”

“The only dreams I had while fevered were of Bolthorn, well and with me.”

“Oh, Princess,” the Vala sighed again. “You were so ill! And you were certain of the war that would come. Of course I watched for Bolvarr when he took the passage, worried by everything you had said. Menja should have listened to me, to her husband, and kept Bolvarr from you, as I asked. Perhaps if she had, he would live still. But you only poisoned him, too.”

“I said enough!” Bolthorn roared. “Arianna is my wife. At no small cost to herself, she saved my life, defended all of us from her father, and returned me home. I will not have you spread these lies beneath my own roof.”

“She is a witch, Bolthorn. Nothing more than another tool of her father. Gunnar uses you through his daughter as he could not while he lived.”

“So this is what the elders believe.” Bolthorn felt cold with anger, his knuckles aching with the pressure of his fists. So much of their response to him was made clearer with the understanding, though it twisted his gut that they trusted any of it. “No wonder they wished for a new Gothi. I suppose you have perverted their thinking so completely they were glad to know me dead.”

“No, Bolthorn!” It was Hyndla who spoke. “None rejoiced at such grave news. You were our Gothi—beloved by your people.”

“Were,” he echoed. “What am I now, Hyndla? You have been a sister to me all my life, and even you believe this venom, these lies. Bad enough Gunnar sought to use his daughter’s blood to bewitch his people, but now Vanadis wishes to do the same, and it is my honor that is questioned, my wisdom. My choice in promising her freedom here, at my side, in exchange for her aid.”

Hyndla turned her face away. “You were happy enough with your own kind once.”

He clenched his jaw, her words lodging deeply in his heart. “We were children.”

“There was love between us, Bolthorn!” Her voice broke on his name, and when she lifted her face, her eyes shone with tears. “Then you return, obsessed with this girl. Can you blame me for wanting to believe it might be so? For clinging to some hope for our future?”

“I would still be bound, Hyndla.” It pained him to say it, no matter how gently. “I am still bound, body and blood, heart to heart and thought to thought. Whatever we shared once, it will never be, now. Whether the council believes Arianna to be a witch or not.”

Hyndla made a strangled noise, her tear filled eyes falling on Arianna with hate. “I will not stay here to watch her lead you into ruin.”

“Hyndla,” his mother murmured. “Do not make this choice in haste, not this way, not now, I beg of you.”

But Hyndla had already turned toward Vanadis, her face set. “I wish to join the Vala,” she said. “If you will have me.”

Arianna inhaled sharply, her fingers twisted through his so tightly it hurt. “No!”

“Hyndla—” he began, but she would not look at him, and Vanadis only smiled. “Hyndla, please, listen to my mother if not me. Do not make this choice so lightly.”

“Lightly!” She laughed bitterly. “Do you think I have waited this long without considering it, over and over. I thought if I stayed, perhaps one day you would recognize I stood before you, but there is nothing left now. The Hrimthursar offer me nothing but long, frozen winters. And among the Vala, I will not have to see the way you look on her.”

“Of course, my dear,” Vanadis said, brushing the tears from her cheeks. “We have always kept a place for the scorned.”

“Hyndla,” Arianna pleaded. “You do not know what you do. There is only one witch in this room, and it is not me.” Hyndla ignored her, ignored all of them, but Arianna grabbed her arm when she turned to leave. “Vanadis meant to kill him, Hyndla. You would not have had him, either way. She meant Bolthorn to die!”

Hyndla stiffened for a moment, her lips curling to bare her tusks in a snarl so vicious, Bolthorn tensed, ready to pull Arianna back. “Do not touch me,
Princess
. You have brought us nothing but pain and heartache, and I have already had my fill.”

She jerked her arm free, then, and left the hut with Vanadis.

“It is only her grief that speaks,” his mother said softly into the silence that followed. “She refused Bolvarr, you know, because she loved you more. And now that he is gone and you have found your wife—she does not mean it.”

“Whether she means it or not,” Arianna said. “Her words are not unfair if Bolvarr is truly gone because of me.”

Bolthorn shook his head, forcing the ache from his heart, and the doubt from his mind. Hyndla was the last Hrimthursar he would ever have thought would turn against him. Her choice struck him deeply, but if it was grief for his brother that drove her…

“If Bolvarr were dead, we would know it, Mother. I will not believe it until I see his body on the pyre.” He moved to add more blackrock to the fire. “Nor should you.”

“Bolthorn.” Arianna worried, he knew, and something else he could not name lurked between them. Not jealousy. But an ache, all the same, and it grieved him. What had been with Hyndla was long over, and he had not meant for her to learn of it this way. She need not have learned of it at all. “Do not let her go.”

He sighed, staring into the flames. “I do not see how I can stop her, but there will be time, yet. If Bolvarr returns—when Bolvarr returns, perhaps it will be enough.”

“It is the best hope,” his mother murmured. “The only hope.”

Eistla was kind to her, though she had not expected it after the lies Vanadis had told. She had not expected the gentleness of her nimble fingers, as she studied the split and blistered skin of her hands, nor the startling beauty and warmth in her amber eyes. Bolthorn had his mother’s eyes, and his mother’s heart, and in that moment, it seemed natural that he had never mentioned his father at all. Why should he have, when Eistla filled so much of who he was.

“We will have to find you some gloves, daughter, for your hands will not take much more of this cold. I might have something that can be cut down to fit. And you’d be better off with hide trousers, too, as long as the winter winds blow.”

Long black hair fell over her shoulder in a thick braid. Raven-black, like Bolthorn’s, and though she was tall and hard-muscled the way the Vid-Gythja would never be, there was no question of Eistla’s sex.

“Fossegrim’s cloak has been a great help,” she admitted. “But I could not always keep my hands inside it.”

She snorted. “That old elf hasn’t lost his touch for all he says he’ll have nothing more to do with court or council. Those who saw you will only remember you did not flinch from the cold, and think the more of you for it.”

“But for Hyndla,” Arianna said.

Bolthorn had left them alone together, gone to retrieve his mother’s healing herbs and salves, as well as the cook pot over her hearth, filled with stew left from her dinner.

“Hyndla always hoped to be his Gythja, no matter that the rest of us could see Bolthorn had no wish to settle for less than the truest of bonds. I should have known when he brought you so far, but I did not understand why the Vala would lie.”

Arianna shook her head. Part of her wondered, though. If she had been so ill, might she have dreamed some of it? No. No, she had not been so sick as that when Vanadis told her what Bolthorn suffered. But what purpose did it serve her to lie now? What purpose did any of it serve at all?

“She wants me,” Arianna said. “She wants me sent back to my people, and the passage sealed. Perhaps she fears the orcs will turn away from the elves, from her influence…” But why? She could not understand the why, and like Fossegrim, it frustrated her. Though, if Fossegrim could not discern Vanadis’s motivations, Arianna was not likely to have greater success. “Could it be the children that trouble her?” She touched her stomach, imagining the small swell of life within. Remembering the way Vanadis had ground her teeth upon the vow Arianna had asked of her. “Our child?”

Eistla’s indrawn breath brought her out of her thoughts. “You carry Bolthorn’s child?”

“Did Vanadis not tell you?” Arianna pressed her lips together. Of course she hadn’t. And she had probably sworn the Vidthursar elders to secrecy.

But what threat could a child hold, truly? The orcs were already free, and if Ingvifreyr returned, they would be made freer still. Vanadis worked against her own influence by bringing her brother home. It made no sense.

“She said nothing of a child! So soon.” Eistla sat back upon her heels. They knelt together beside the hearth on a pair of the woven mats. “And the bond you share. Bolvarr told us your thoughts laughed together, and Bolthorn would not have taken you as his wife for anything less.”

“I would have stayed with the Vidthursar, as Bolvarr asked of me, but the council allowed Vanadis to stand in place of my mother, to direct the care of the child on Bolthorn’s behalf.”

Eistla’s jaw tightened, the expression so reminiscent of her son that Arianna had no trouble recognizing her distress. “The Vala should not have taken you.”

“Vanadis should not have done many things,” Bolthorn said from the doorway. “I fear stealing my wife was the least of her sins.” He lifted the cook pot and offered Arianna a wry smile, though his eyes searched hers, questioning. “Still warm, and my mother’s cooking will put Fossegrim’s fish stew to shame.”

Where the Vidthursar had used wood, the Hrimthursar made everything of clay and stone and metals—bowls and cups and spoons and knives. They were masters of their crafts, all the orcs, creating beautiful things from the simplest materials for the commonest of purposes. Her father would have lusted for all of it. Would have flown into rages, had he known their skill, and become all the more determined to enslave them. And perhaps it was so simple as that. Perhaps Vanadis only wished to protect the orcs, to prevent another king like Gunnar from rising to power. But she did not trust the thought. Not at all.

Arianna pushed it all away and returned Bolthorn’s smile, determined to enjoy this night, despite the Vala. “Then I must hope she is willing to teach me, for I fear I was not permitted in the kitchens long enough to cook even as well as Fossegrim.”

“The salve,” Eistla chided when Bolthorn did not produce it at once, setting the cook pot beside the fire first, instead. “Or did your stomach distract you from your purpose?”

“Not even hunger could cause me to forget the needs of my wife,” Bolthorn said, removing a clay pot from beneath the fabric of his shirt, kept warm against his ribs. He knelt at Arianna’s side and scooped two fingers worth of the mixture. “Let me.”

She offered her hands, and he smeared the thick salve across her knuckles. It eased the tightness of her skin nearly at once and she sighed with relief. “My thanks, Eistla.”

Bolthorn’s mother gave a soft snort. “You will not thank me when the skin heals enough to itch. Twice a day until then, morning and night. And gloves, daughter. You
must
wear gloves!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Eistla saw them fed before she left, taking the empty cook pot with her and promising fresh bread in the morning. Bolthorn walked with her to the door of the hut, and whatever words they exchanged were too low for Arianna to hear. She stayed by the fire and gave Bolthorn a moment of privacy with his mother. Arianna had told Eistla everything of their journey, from Gautar to the mountain and beyond it, and Bolthorn had added his own travels through the quartz.

“The Ancestors were with you,” Eistla had said. “The council cannot ignore that truth, no matter what Vanadis says. And if Arianna thought you were dead, they cannot truly believe she bewitched you still. Fossegrim would have known it if she had.”

“And am I to admit I wintered in Tiveden with Fossegrim?” Bolthorn asked. “I would not tell Vanadis we had his help for anything. If she knew the truth of what he was to us, she would see him exiled, and with Ingvifreyr’s return, he is needed among the elves.”

“She cannot mean to stay long,” Arianna said, though it was more hopeful than anything else. “Ingvifreyr waits on her success with Sinmarra.”

Surely Vanadis would put her brother’s welfare ahead of whatever trouble she and Bolthorn caused her. Wouldn’t she? Arianna did not like thinking Vanadis was there, waiting for them, waiting for her to leave Bolthorn’s side. She did not like to think Vanadis was whispering in the ears of other orcs like Hyndla. She did not like to think of Hyndla, either, or the tears in her eyes when she had looked at Bolthorn.

Arianna forced it from her mind, as she had so many other things since they had arrived.

Bolthorn had only grunted, his brow creased with troubled lines. “I wish I knew what she wanted of us, why she cared. The Hrimthursar have always stood apart, but we have never bothered those who disagreed with our choices.”

“If the Hrimthursar have stood apart it was because you have never been satisfied unless you carved your own path up the mountain.” Eistla smiled wryly. “You were even determined to find your own way from my body, though it nearly killed us both. The Hrimthursar only followed their Gothi.”

Had Bolthorn been so great a leader among his people that they would follow him now in his choice of wife? Arianna added more blackrock to the fire while she waited. Bolthorn had not meant to find a human wife, and she had never meant to marry an orc. Would never have dreamed that she might love an orc at all, truly.

In Gautar, orcs were nothing more than monsters, ugly beasts of legend, sent to terrify and lay waste. Vanadis must realize that. It was not as though the Hrimthursar would be flooded with half-human children, even if they made a peace with Gautar, and there was little hope of that if her brothers ruled, less if Ragnar had taken the throne. The orcs were better off on their mountain, and her people were certainly safer without the influence of the elves. Her mother’s fate, the king’s madness, they were both proof of that.

She was beginning to believe everyone was safer without the influence of the elves, just as Fossegrim had said before. The orcs were better off without the interference of Vanadis in their affairs, and as long as the elves lived, there would be those among them who felt it their place to order the fates of their lesser cousins, for Arianna did not doubt that was how the elves looked upon the orcs.

How long until the desire to help their so-called inferiors became something more—something worse. How long until the elves looked upon the orcs and saw them as nothing more than servants? Useful only as long as they mined blackrock and other ore, guarding the mountain. And all the orcs had ever wanted was to be accepted again, to be seen as elves once more. How far would that desire lead them into service to their cousins, hoping for redemption and forgiveness, dreaming that the elves might one day look upon them as equals again? How far had it led them down that path already?

She drew her knees to her chest, hugging them tightly. Bolthorn would never permit it. As long as he led his people, they would serve the Ancestors alone, no matter what promises the elves made in return. He was not foolish enough to lead his people into slavery for an empty dream.

“I fear this was not the homecoming I envisioned for either of us,” Bolthorn said softly, sitting beside her. His mother must have gone. “But I should have realized Vanadis would not forget you. She must have gone to Fossegrim and discovered you had fled, and once she learned from the Vid-Gothi that I lived, where else might you go but here, with me?”

Arianna leaned against the warmth of his side, letting the strength of his body and the comfort of his voice lure her from grimmer thoughts. “I thought for a moment your mother might believe her.”

Bolthorn snorted. “If she believes in us, there is hope for both her sons; Bolvarr still might live.”

Bolvarr, poor Bolvarr. If he died, they would not be wrong to blame her. Even if she had not bewitched him, it had been her words, her plight that had moved him. She closed her eyes against the pain of that blood spilled. “Why would he cross the mountain at all?”

“Oh, that.” Bolthorn stroked her hair. “My mother believes he meant to draw Vanadis’s attention away from you. That you might find a way to reach Fossegrim before she returned to check on you in Tiveden. She was so determined that the passage must remain closed.” He paused, and when she looked up at his face, his jaw was tight again. “Hyndla begged him not to go.”

Arianna dropped her gaze back to the fire, refusing to pull away, though part of her wanted to. Hyndla. He’d never mentioned—but they had been given so little time. Of course he must have had other… others. The way he had made love to her spoke of experience. She flushed, hoping the heat of the hearth would hide it, and turned her face away.

“Was she—” she stopped herself, not sure she wanted to know if it had been more than just Hyndla. But she’d always wonder now, how many other of the Hrimthursar who might leave to join the Vala would go because they could not stand to see Bolthorn with her, instead. “She must have loved you very much.”

Bolthorn lifted her chin, turning her face back to his. “It was a long time ago, Arianna. We were young, and it’s true what she said, there was love between us. Enough love that there was little risk in… learning. But we grew older, and what I felt for her—it is the love of a brother for his sister, that is all.”

“But she still hoped, Bolthorn.” Just as Arianna had hoped, once, before he had told her his feelings. When it had only been a dream of kindness and love instead of duty and pain. She could not fault Hyndla for wanting him, knowing his touch for herself, his courage, his tenderness, but she hated that he had shared some part of himself with another, and so much of it—so much of it, that Hyndla had still believed he might choose her.

“She knew what I wanted, that I would not be bound until I found it, but even as I searched, I never dreamed…” His voice was low and rough with emotion. He slid his fingers along her jaw, opening his hand to cup her cheek, and the warmth in his eyes made her flush hotter still. “What we have is more than I ever realized possible. What you have given me is more than just love, Princess. What we share is more than just love.”

And she felt it, too. The beat of his heart in her chest, the caress of his thoughts and emotions, like the rush of a river current over her skin. She closed her eyes and reached along the string of their binding, the unseen yarn that stretched between them, and he sighed.

“Perhaps Vanadis was not wrong,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Perhaps you have bewitched me, body and soul.”

“If I have, it was only because you had done the same to me. From the moment I saw your hand against the glass, I could think of nothing else but you, hear nothing but your voice, calling me back.”

“And what will the council make of that, I wonder?” When she opened her eyes, she saw his lips twitch. “I do not know how even Vanadis can argue against such a bond. If I can only manage to make them see—” His mouth firmed. “They must see all of this for what it is. A ploy of Vanadis. And more. It is as Fossegrim said, we cannot go forward by looking back. We cannot keep looking to the elves for guidance, nor should we be accepting it blindly. Vanadis has proven that.”

“Perhaps that is why she fears you,” Arianna said. “Did you ever look to her? As Gothi, I mean.”

He leaned back on his hands, the fire reflected in his amber eyes, but he was watching her not the flames, and she turned to face him, that they might speak more easily, leaning against his hip.

“I never dishonored her. Even when we did not agree, I always spoke to her with the greatest respect. She is an elder, and the orcs do not forget the debts they owe—I would not have lived if she had not cut me from my mother’s body—but it did not seem to me that she was ever happy. Her husband is long dead, and the child she bore him after he became orc… The elves hoped we would wither and die, I think, if left in exile. Certainly they did not expect us to breed, and we did not know, then, that our children would be cursed this way.”

She touched his face, the clan marks, and the curve of his lips. “Not a curse, Bolthorn.”

He bared his tusks. “Perhaps it is not so, now,” he conceded. “But then? Then we were still elves. Tortured and twisted, but elves. It was not until Vanadis bore her son that we understood. Even with his mother’s blood, he was blue-grey and ugly. We would never be elves again. She did not take it well, giving birth to a monster.”

“And I would rather our child be tusked and green-skinned with your heart than perfect as an elf, and just as wretched,” she said fiercely. “I would rather our child be raised among orcs, loved for what he is, than looked down on by elves for what he is not.”

“He?” Bolthorn said softly, his eyes warming again. He leaned forward, cupping his hand over her stomach. The way he looked at her made her heart fly faster. “Is that what you hope for? A son?”

She covered his hand with her own, dropping her eyes to the contrast of her pale skin against the green tones of his. “In Gautar, sons are all that matter. Every woman hopes for one.”

“But you are not in Gautar any longer,” he said, the words as gentle as his touch. “A daughter could be a warrior, a hunter, a crafter or trader. Honored as highly as any son.”

“She could not be Gothi.” She looked up, watching his reaction. “She could not lead the Hrimthursar.”

He smiled. “Perhaps not yet, but she is bound to have a long life.”

Arianna slept deeply, a strand of her hair spread across her cheek and umber in the firelight. He brushed it from her face, tucking it behind her ear. Much as he tried, he could not settle his mind for sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he thought of Hyndla or Bolvarr, or remembered the narrow looks of the Hrimthursar in the village as he passed them by to Eistla’s hut. The mistrust in their eyes even greater than it had been when he arrived.

His own people did not trust him. Because of Vanadis. Because he loved Arianna. And if she had been the reason for Bolvarr’s death, could he blame them? But his own survival was proof that not every word Vanadis spoke was true. Unless she had told them Arianna had given her the news, just as she had slithered from beneath Arianna’s accusations. Fever dreams, indeed!

And yet. Even Fossegrim had wondered if Arianna had misunderstood something, at first. Bolthorn’s certainty had convinced the old elf as much as Arianna’s words. Might it be as the Vala said? Not all of it. He knew bone deep Vanadis had not meant for him to return alive, even Fossegrim had seen the truth of it in what had happened, and Arianna had believed him dead, without question. But what of the reason for it? Could Arianna have dreamed that it had been soldiers? Dreamed that the Vala wished her to return to her people to persuade them with Elvish magic?

But Arianna had not known the meaning of what Vanadis had suggested—it had not been until she repeated the words and he had told her what Elvish Persuasion was that she had understood. How could that have been a dream? And Asvi had not denied that they meant to teach her magic, to send her back to become queen.