Page 92 of Wed to the Orc Captive

My voice was rusty. I hummed to warm it, found low, round sounds before picking up a melody, an echo of the invitation to the robin, and I brought it higher, moved into trills. I tried to focus on the complexity of the music, on what I could do with my voice, and ignore what was coming, the fear in my gut.

Nothing happened. No rustling in the bushes, no movement through the trees. I sang, and I sang, and I stopped.

“Let’s keep moving,” said Tyralk.

We moved.

Vrathgar had said that sometimes hunters got desperate and tried to bring in the creatures with their own blood. It was a bad idea. Many of the wizards’ beasts grew frenzied at the scent, and the smallest injury brought down the efficiency of a warrior. We walked, and I sang, and we walked, and I sang, and I hoped our quest would not become desperate.

And I began to lose track of why I was singing.

It felt like I hadn’t prayed in a while.

The focus on the song loosened my shoulders. I started to feel my arms swing with my gait. I was taking in more air, breathing clearer. And into my silly call I started mixing in my own thoughts, the soreness of my hips from sleeping afraid to turn, my tendrils of feeling regarding the man who walked beside me, his hand twitching over a sword hilt, the way his eyes raked over me like he worried I’d fall. Singing had always felt like reaching up, like pleading. But at this point I didn’t feel like pleading anymore. I wanted to protest. I wanted to scream.

Why put me in this world without the ability to do anything in it? Why give me someone I loved, without the ability to keep him?

Were some of us crafted as prey? Did the strong have to rule, and did God or Goddess look the other way?

Look at this. Witness me. Is this what we are? Is this a right fate?

My song trembled on the air, the last notes, and I stopped. A shaft of sunlight reached the ground, brilliant, a cascade. A waterfall over dark leaves.

Larrakh held up her hand, knifed it towards the undergrowth. Weapons slid quiet from their sheaths.

A small hog-like creature rushed out, an ugly pig with giant incisors and a long tail, like a rat. It rushed into the clearing, squealing, and someone cut it down.

Tyralk’s shoulders slumped. Someone touched his back. He shook his head, kept staring at the beast on the ground.

“We’ll keep searching,” Vrathgar said. “No one is going to call a halt yet.”

Tyralk shook his head again. “I never promised I’d succeed my father.” He took a breath. “I already got what I called a hunt for.”

One of the others stepped forward, as if to argue, but he turned away. “Let’s get the teeth and the hide. I’m weakened, not wasteful.” He stepped towards the carcass.

I heard something.

Leaves were moving, crushing, rustling and rushing, nearer and nearer, like the way a strong wind builds far away. There was a hiss, behind the trees, behind the brush. “There’s something coming.” None of them were listening. Only Vrathgar looked up. “There’s something coming! That way⁠—”

He moved first. “Look out!"

A serpentine thing with a head the size of a draft horse spilled out between the trees.

They had warned me about aberrations, but nothing like this. It reared back, a massive hood spreading back from its blunt face.

The wizards’-beast would have been beautiful if it wasn’t horrible. The scales caught the light like leaves. Like a polished jewel.

Its first strike almost killed our youngest.

Tyralk rolled away, lurching up onto his good leg. I realized I’d cried out in horror when those glittering eyes swiveled to me, like it responded to my voice. It opened a mouth full of fangs— too many fangs, too many tongues. Did snakes have mouths full of tongues? It hissed, the sound like wind shaking the trees.

“Annora, move!” Vrathgar knocked me away, his swords lunging up, slicing twice. The slightest graze showed between scales on its nose. “Stay back!” he yelled, and I scrambled and sank knee-deep in the detritus. Larrakh launched in, next to Brezha and Hagnar, and it seemed they were spreading out to keep the distance to dodge. Vrathgar was fast, baiting in its strikes, and one of the others got a strike at its belly.

“Its scales are armor!” Tyralk shouted. “It’s not a gnurthick—" and that’s where my understanding ended, as they shifted into their tongue, as I only understood the problem as the beast dove again.

The wizards had made the beasts that the orcs fought, that the orcs kept controlled, ages ago. If this wasn’t one of those, what was it?

“Get its eyes, get its mouth!” shouted Vrathgar. “They can’t armor an eyeball!”