Page 52 of Agor

“There is one more arrow. In your back.” She shook her head, her mouth pinched with concern. “How are you still standing? You should be in bed. We need to clean this wound too. It’s nasty.”

Now that the rush of the battle had receded, the pain from all the injuries she’d mentioned started to register with me. But it would take more than that to fell me.

“You’re wounded too.” I slid aside the torn sleeve of her shirt to inspect the angry red line on her upper arm.

Grat cleared his throat nearby, bringing my attention back to our surroundings. Orcs and humans had gathered around us, watching with confusion and disbelief how Becca and I fussed over each other’s injuries.

“I think some explanation is in order, chief.” Grat tipped his axe at the humans in the crowd, who seemed especially confused.

Only now I noticed that Grat was wearing his best silk shirt, the one embroidered with gemstones along the neckline and on the sleeves. Nacy had decorated with flowers her brand-new leather bustier, the one she’d fashioned using the pattern she’d made from Becca’s armor.

The timely arrival of my people was fortunate, though I didn’t know the reason for it. They didn’t look like they were going to war.

An old man limped forward, holding a long spear covered in blood.

“I know you,” he gritted his teeth at me. “We caught you, but you escaped before we could punish you. Becca...” The man turned to my woman. “Didn’t this orc hurt you before?”

Becca’s eyes shifted, as if looking for an escape. She clearly wasn’t good at lying.

Another old man shook a bloodied stick at me.

“You should’ve been dead!”

Grat stepped forward, adjusting his grip on his axe. “Who are you threatening, old man?”

I lifted a hand, stopping Grat, who looked ready for more carnage.

Becca straightened her spine and propped her hands on her hips. “Aren’t you glad now, Elder Kazimir, that heisn’tdead? His orcs saved our settlement, including your ass.”

Kazimir choked on his breath at her audacity.

“We were attacked in the first place because of them!” he yelled. “They came here for him.”

She shook her head.

“They came here for me. I killed their kind, and they came for revenge.”

“Farod didn’t know who killed Urug,” I said. “No one knew your name.”

She nodded. “They didn’t know my name. But they knew I was a human, and that was enough. They decided to kill us all.”

“We escaped to this part of the world in search of peace,” Kazimir lamented. “And now, look at all this devastation.”

He spread his arms wide, encompassing their ransacked settlement with the upturned wagons, a broken fence, and dead bodies on the blood-soaked ground.

“You’ll never have peace in the wetlands if you keep living the way you are,” Grat stated the hard, bitter truth. “You won’t make it much longer on your own. Just look at this place. You’re living in wagons that offer no protection at all. Your fence is a joke. A human is not a match to an orc in combat. It’s a miracle you’ve lasted here for as long as you have, and it only happened because Farod and the others had bigger fish to fry. Either way,he would’ve attacked you sooner or later. And without us here, he would’ve razed this place to the ground, sparing no one.”

Faced with Grat’s firm words, Kazimir stepped back, leaning on his walking stick unsteadily.

“But why are you here?” Becca asked Grat. “Did Agor send for you somehow?”

I had no time to send for help. Even if I did, the message would’ve taken hours to reach the keep. They would’ve never arrived here in time.

Grat scratched the back of his neck, looking uncharacteristically bashful.

“The chief didn’t send for us,” he said. “We came on our own.”

Nacy stepped forward, along with a human boy who seemed to be about her age. They held hands, I noted.

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