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Chapter 1
Dura
There are few things I enjoy more than the heat of battle. Especially when it is against the damned armies of Adrik, those cowardly curs that attacked the border towns of my homeland without provocation. They thought that because our country has been peaceful in recent years that we had become weak. That they could take our land and we could not or would not do anything about it. As an orcress of honor, I relish teaching them the folly of their ways through the deadliest of means.
The gate to the human stronghold, Fort Attis, falls before our battering ram. Finally, after months of siege, we have breached the human defenses. I grin, a bloodthirsty expression. This will be the final battle of the war if we can just kill the human king hiding behind the walls. I stand close to my king and cousin, Rognar. He catches my eye and I let my smile grow.
Heaving my ax into the air, I yell, "Blood in rivers!" The Orikesh battle cry.
"Blood in rivers!" The cry is picked up around me and our forces surge forward. Our Horde overtakes the fortress like a swarm of locusts, human soldiers falling beneath our blades effortlessly.
Onward we push, getting closer and closer to the inner sanctum, the only place a craven king like Yorian can hide. The humans try to stop us but they are weak after being cut off from their supplies. Rognar and I work together as a team, my ax and knives weaving in and out of his slashes and parries to take down the more stubborn and skilled of the human warriors. Soon we are in the inner courtyard, blood spraying under our weapons, the ground becoming slick with it. Something gold winks in my peripheral vision and I see the human king being spirited up some stairs, stillwearing his fucking crown. He is surrounded by bodies in blue uniforms, all protecting him as they move him toward a tower of black stone in the corner of the courtyard.
“Rognar!” I shout, “The king!”
My cousin whirls around and marks what I have seen. We push forward, flanked by Gunag and Urim, his closest advisors, and push toward the cowardly, retreating human ruler.
It is then that I seehim. A human warrior at the foot of the stairs, holding off the onslaught by himself. He has the markings of a captain on his uniform, and he fights like a demon possesses him. More than one orc falls beneath his weapon as he swings his sword. It is easy to tell he is a genius with a blade. Each move he makes is punctuated by death or injury, as the rest of the blue group pushes their king toward safety.
I hear him shout, “Get the king to the Shadow Tower and barricade the door! I’ll hold the line here!”
Oh, he will, will he? Something sparks in my blood as I watch the human warrior. Something I have never felt before. It’s like destiny is calling me. I am meant to kill this captain. I know it. I feel it deep in my bones. Rognar moves to the stairs, but I shout, “No! That human’s mine!”
Rognar raises a brow before easily parrying a human’s stray blade. “Are you sure, Dura? He is skilled. We should attack him together.”
I knock an arrow out of the air that is heading toward my king before replying, “My Oath that I will kill him or die trying. I can take him.” I am being reckless now, but something tells me that the one to fight the human warrior must be me.
My cousin hesitates for a moment before acquiescing. “Then on your head be it. But get him off those stairs. He’s blocking the way to Yorian.” The human king’s name is an expletive on Rognar’s lips.
I smirk and dart forward, heading toward the captain. Another soldier gets in my way, waving his blade wildly, panic stark in hishuman blue eyes. He lacks the skill and composure of his captain, making him easy to defeat. I swiftly knock away his sword with my ax and cleanly take his head in a single sweep. Then I arrive at the human that has taken my attention.
The captain swings around to meet me, his stance instantly getting more wary.Good.He is a skilled enough warrior to tell that I am more of a threat to him than the others who have met him so far. My smile widens as I attack, making each blow increasingly more aggressive than the previous one. My intensity startles him, but he is able to parry each hit, even as I force him to walk backward up the stairs. He is on the high ground, and he gives as good as he is getting, matching each attack with an attempted one of his own. But I am fast, faster even than most orcs, light on my feet, a gift from my elvish mother. None of his blows land. He is all business, going only for the most lethal of strikes. I surprise myself by not returning the favor. Even as we are locked together in a deadly dance, I am playing with him, my blows almost teasing.
We reach the top of the stairs, but his back is still toward the door where Yorian disappeared, protecting it. I need to stop amusing myself and either kill him or move him. I feint right, then go for his left, making him hastily step away in order to avoid my blow. He lunges forward in a thrust toward my middle. That would be an awful death. Long and lingering. But again, I am too quick for him. I parry his strike with my ax and then trip him in his lunge, making him lose his feet for just a moment and he has to take a few steps to right himself. I slip past him, stepping where he was, so nowmyback is to the door and he is on the opposite side. Attacking with renewed vigor, I push him back, across the ramparts, leaving room behind us for Rognar to get into the tower.
As Rognar slips past us and moves up the steps towards Yorian, I smile again, triumph filling my veins, even as the human captain’s eyes narrow. He tries to copy my move from earlier to make me step away so that he can get back to the door. But it’smytrick and I block him again.
However, with a deft flick of his wrist, his sword catches under the blade of my ax and I am suddenly disarmed. It was so quick, so graceful, that I’m not even sure how it happened. His gaze is cold, clinical even, as he fights me like the battle is not heating his blood the way it is mine. It is almost like he is just going through the steps, each move emotionless and calculating. I can tell, though, by the light that enters his eyes, that he thinks he has me. He dashes forward again, this time swinging toward my head as if to decapitate me like I did to his comrade earlier. But I dodge and in a moment I have my daggers in each hand, and duck under his blade, rushing up to take him down. Behind me I can hear my cousin with his ever-present advisors breaking down the tower door, going for Yorian. I need to finish here, meet up with them, and end this war.
I am frustrated when the captain does some fast footwork and evades my blades. Then his elbow shoots out, knocking into my shoulder, which causes me to miss a step. He tries to surge past me, toward my king, ostensibly to stop them from entering the tower. Alright, playtime is done. The human captain, impressive fighter though he is, needs to die.
I pivot with all the speed I possess, darting in front of the warrior, blades outstretched. He is caught off-guard by my quick recovery and takes a few steps back.
“Your king is going to die,” I taunt, “and there is nothing you can do about it.”
“I can’t let that happen,” returns the captain, his tenor calm and methodical like the rest of him. But do I catch a hint of regret in his words? In the light in his eyes? What could that mean?
I do not have time to think about it, though, as he tries to press his advantage and feints with a thrust that turns into a deadly slash. I catch it with both my daggers and throw his sword back again. With any other warrior, that move would have disarmed him, as he did me, but frustratingly he keeps his blade.
On and on our battle goes, no one keeping the advantage for long. We are evenly matched, a fact that would impress me aboutthe human if it weren’t starting to make me angry. My blows become savage, all my speed and strength feeding into the brutality of my strikes. Both of us are flagging, our energy caught up in the duel. We fight all along the top of the wall, parrying this way and that, our footwork flawless, matching blow for blow.
Then, finally, I see it, a hole in his defense. He is favoring his left, his sword strikes becoming a little slower as the battle rages on. On his next slash, I duck under the blade, only to rush forward to his right, my left dagger raised, drawing back to strike. I half expect him to parry, to move, to spin out of the way of my lethal blow.Something. But with the gods’ own will, it seems, my orc-make blade finds its home in his chest, breaking through the links of his mail like they were tissue.
His eyes open with surprise, shock and pain mingled within them. He gasps, a gurgling, sickening sound. We are close enough that our breaths mingle as I look at him, holding his gaze as he dies. When suddenly, my Mating Instinct raises its head within me and roars. Everything changes within me, like I was standing on solid ground only to fall into the sea. My heart quickens and something slides into place, deep in my chest, like I was the one stabbed. The Recognition is upon me as instantaneously as a summer storm.
This man, my enemy, is myAsh’ka, my soul mate, my one and only.
And I have just killed him.
