Page 4 of The Outcast Orc

I quirked an eyebrow. “Did I brag? How’d I manage that without speaking so much as a word?”

“I’m just trying to help you,” she whispered as another guard passed within earshot. Once he was gone, she added, “Folks can brag plenty without saying a thing. The way you stand there with your chin up. The way you were holding his stare. People like you—the guards like to knock you down a peg. Like when slavers brought me here, just a few days before you, there was a handmaid from a real fancy house. She always got it way worse than the rest of us…if you know what I mean.”

I hitched my eyebrow higher.

“Just trying to help,” she repeated.

“Why bother?” a younger guy called out from a few cages down. His voice was raspy and dry. “We’re all as good as dead.”

3

QUINN

“Y’know what? Forget I said anything.” Bess curled up in the far corner of her cage—which wasn’t very far at all—leaned back against the bars, and shut her eyes.

Honestly, there was a grain of truth to what she’d been trying to tell me. I never backed down from a challenge. If it ever got out that I laid with men, I’d figured, I couldn’t afford to look weak. Not only did I need to be the best at trimming a hoof, at correcting a stubborn gait, at gentling a stallion…I had to be utterly above caring what any of the others thought of me. Maybe it was no way to make friends. But at least I enjoyed a grudging respect.

For all the good it did me.

Before I could admit Bess was right, a new guard stomped in, and then another, and soon the reeking tent was buzzing with activity. The sleazy trader in his ridiculous soiled finery was flinging orders faster than his men could follow.

“Give the labor an extra ration. No one’s gonna buy ’em if they’re collapsed on the bottom of their cages. Oil up the catamites. Put the pretty girls toward the back, so we can offload the sorry ones to the horny bastards who grab the first piece of ass they see. And make sure they got their tits out.” He paused in the middle of the tent and waved an arm in my general direction. “Set that one aside—he’ll fetch a good price from the Blood Nomads.”

Orcs might be nothing more than a fairy tale, but Blood Nomads were, unfortunately, very real. I’d met one myself in the market square. The trader was right—theycoulduse my skills, as they practically lived on horseback. But during the drought season, they survived on coagulated loaves of animal blood—horse, cow, even camel—which, over generations, they’d somehow developed the ability to digest. Outsiders couldn’t say the same. And even if I did survive the lean months, their meandering travel patterns would take me farther from the Fortifications than I already was. I couldn’t let the nomads carry me off if I ever hoped to get back to civilization.

One of the guards paused to squint at the cages, scratching his armpit. “Which one did he say?”

I pointed at a new “recruit” who was sleeping off a bender. “Him.”

Lucky for me the guard wasn’t Bollocks, who would have known damn well I was the one the trader had meant. They dragged the hungover guy’s cage outside, then hauled poor Bess, with her cropped hair, toward the front with the other, less desirable “merchandise.” I averted my eyes to allow her some scrap of dignity. Once her cage was gone, I could see the guy who’d spoken before, the one with the raspy voice. He was even younger than I’d imagined—better looking, too, with striking coppery hair. But a bruise in the shape of a handprint covered his left cheek. And when he saw me staring, he replied with a weary smirk.

“You should go with the Nomads,” he said. “Otherwise, you’ll be shipped off to the copper mines on the coast.”

Even farther from the Fortifications. And even harder to escape.

A toothless old man approached the redhead’s cage with a bucket and rag. “All right, Archie.” He was businesslike, even bored, as he wet the same rag that had been used on every other slave he’d seen so far. “Clean up.”

Archie swabbed himself down and said, “Should I get my tits out, too?”

The old man had a few crude cosmetics with him, and while a dusting of rouge wouldn’t do much to hide the print on Archie’s face, it did make his skin seem less peaked. “You’re a mouthy one, aintcha?” He gestured toward the ruddy, five-fingered mark. “Now you’ll end up with someone who likes to rough ’em up.”

Archie shrugged. “Then at least it’ll be over fast.”

The old man hauled his bucket over to me, squinting. “Well. Look at you. You’re getting a bit long in the tooth for a bedboy.”

I was thirty—not a hundred and thirty—though that was nearly twice the age of the shivering catamites doing their best to look brave.

If I wanted to take my chances with the Blood Nomads, the time to speak up was now. Or, for that matter, to demand my extra rations and be dumped in with the laborers. But anyone wealthy enough to own a pleasure slave would have ties to the Fortifications. Just two weeks ago, I'd been desperate to escape those walls. Now they seemed like paradise…and playing a whore was the only chance I stood at getting back home. So, I imitated Archie’s careless shrug, and sealed my fate. “Men might claim they’re looking for virgins—but what they really want is someone who knows how to handle a dick.”

I could only speak for myself, of course…but it must have rung true enough. The old man shoved the rag at me. I was filthy, both from my time on the road and my time in captivity. Maybe the wipe-down helped. Maybe not. At least I could chafe the spit from my cheek.

“Not many good years left,” the old man said as I reflexively blinked against the kohl he smeared under my eyes. He followed it up with a dusting of ground mica across my cheekbones and a daub of rouge on each nipple. "But that clever mouth might keep you fed once your bloom fades.”

I looked ridiculous. But I preferred the makeup to an iron collar and a pickaxe.

Once the man had moved on, Archie said, “You’re lucky you’re pretty enough—and it doesn’t hurt that he’s half blind. Stand in the shadows and maybe someone will cough up a few pieces of silver for you.”

Even less than I’d got for poor Mercy.

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