Page 13 of The Outcast Orc

“She’s not for sale,” I said.

“Are you sure?” He cocked his head in that peculiar goblin way. With bulging eyes set so wide in their faces, it’s a wonder they can’t see behind themselves. “Everything’s got a price.”

Borkul joined us in nothing but his breeches with the scent of sandflower and goblin wafting off his skin. “Of course it does. Uh…what were we talking about?”

“That human there, on the end,” the male goblin repeated. “How much?”

Before Borkul could answer, I repeated more firmly, “She is not for sale.”

The female goblin fluttered her eyelashes. “Come now, Mr. Watchkeeper…we can offer double what you paid. Surely you could see the advantage of telling your chieftain she slipped off into the night—then pocket the extra coin for yourselves.”

“You don’t know what we paid,” Borkul said, bantering, light.

The male goblin cocked his head the other way. “Ah, but we can guess. We haven’t been to the edge of the human settlements ourselves, but we’ve rutted with enough traders who’ve passed through. How about this—double the coin, and I’ll throw in a sack of fried cave crickets bigger than your head. They’re in season, you know. Extra spicy.”

Borkul cut his eyes to me. He was tempted—not by the cave crickets, but the coin. It was easy money, and the chieftain was only expecting us to return with two humans anyway. But I couldn’t buy my way back into his favor. I had to be the one to end the Two Swords Clan’s incursions for good.

I shook my head once, and Borkul shrugged. He ushered the goblins toward the edge of our camp with an easy laugh. “Sorry, my short friends—finders keepers. Though I will be sure to check out those cave crickets before we set off in the morning.”

Once the goblins were gone, Borkul joined me to crouch beside the fire. “They seemed pretty keen on the female,” he observed. I grunted. “Come to think of it, I didn’t notice any human whores by the red lantern.”

“So, there’s your answer. You know how squeamish humans can be about mating with other races. I’m sure human wenches and bedboys are always in demand.”

Borkul scratched an armpit. “And yet, they didn’t make an offer for the boy.”

“Then they must have plenty of males. Not our problem. If it’s human wenches they want, they can go to the slavers themselves. Your watch starts in two hours. Go to sleep.”

Since I’d already cleared the ground by the fire and swept it smooth with the branches of a fallen spruce, Borkul didn’t need to do anything but lie down and close his eyes. Though he did pause to glance over at our humans and say, “How they manage to sleep on those mushy, lumpy bedrolls, I’ll never know.”

Soon enough, Borkul rolled onto his belly and started to snore. The distant sounds from the bazaar carried on the night wind. Different races had different ideas of what time was best for sleeping—day or night—so the noise there never really shut down. It just changed in tenor depending on who was awake.

I could find work easily enough in a settlement like that. Merchants were always eager to hire orcish security. What would it be like to live among so many other different races? I suspected that, oddly enough, there'd be a certain anonymity there, even if I was the sole orc in a mass of goblins and mongrels and ogres and whatever else called these streets home. I doubted anyone would stop me from leaving the Red Hand. It was tempting to stay in a place where I didn’t need to carry my past on my shoulders.

But fleeing your past is no way to atone for your mistakes.

Lost in thought, I let Borkul sleep an extra hour, then woke him once my eyelids grew heavy. We had too many miles yet to travel, and I needed rest. With one last look at the humans huddled together on their uncomfortable bedrolls, I settled in by the fire to sleep—

—and was pulled from the depths of slumber by the sound of a human shriek.

Our fire hissed as a bucket of water doused it, but not before I spied the silhouette of a half-dozen thieves creeping through our camp—the goblin with the bronze earrings leading the way. Borkul! The thought of him slaughtered in his sleep, just like his sister, brought bile to the back of my throat.

My eyes hadn’t quite adjusted to the dark, but I calmed myself with a strong whiff. No scent of blood.

Not yet.

Goblins are tunnelers, and by starlight alone, they can see everything clear as day. They’d doused the fire to give themselves an advantage, since my vision would take a moment to catch up. I groped for the short club I always kept at my side, but it was nowhere. My sword lay with my gear—too long for this tight space—and the club was likely in the hands of the marauding goblins already. My eating knife wouldn’t do much good, but I pulled it anyhow. Since I had no desire to be brained by my own weapon, I cast around in the dark for something substantial to defend myself with, but I’d cleared the ground around me for sleeping too well, and there was nothing.

And then Borkul pressed his back to mine in a fighting stance and asked, “How many?”

You’d know damn well if you’d been awakewas the obvious answer, but I was too relieved he was still alive to say so. “Five, maybe six.”

“They’ve got my sword,” he said, and came up with a splintered plank to defend himself with.

Our humans were awake now. The younger male cried out, “What the—? Whatarethey?” Two goblins were already on them, one prying out the tent peg while another tried to wedge open our female’s collar.

The tent peg was the first to give, and soon, the end of the chain swung free—but if the goblins thought to drag off our slaves…the humans had other ideas.

The human horseman yanked the chain from the goblin’s startled grasp, swinging it in an easy, defensive circle. His stance was firm—he stood like a fighter, not a slave. In the moonlight, his skin didn’t look nearly as soft and vulnerable as it had by firelight. I’d been leery of this one when he came at me with a makeshift knife. But I was glad enough for him now, since he was willing to defend the female. Without a decent weapon at hand and so many goblins skulking through our camp, I welcomed the alliance…even if I could only trust him to protect his own kind.

---