Page 10 of Bound By Blood
"More than warfare. Extermination." The word tastes bitter even now. "Your king's advisors convinced him that orcs represented a permanent threat, that peace could only come through overwhelming force."
Lady Eirian shifts uncomfortably, chains clinking against stone. "My family opposed those policies. House Thorne voted against the expansion treaties."
"I know. Your mother sent warning through her usual channels, urged evacuation of vulnerable settlements. But warnings mean little when raiders move under cover of darkness."
The night everything changed.
I close my eyes and let the memory surface fully, no longer fighting the tide of recollection that threatens to drown rational thought.
"They came at new moon, when darkness provided perfect cover. Professional soldiers, not border scouts or opportunistic bandits. Three hundred men in blackened mail, moving with purpose toward our harvest villages."
The grotto's peace cannot soften these edges. Steam rises around us, but I feel only the cold wind that swept down from the peaks that terrible night, carrying scents of smoke and blood on its breath.
"My mother led the evacuation of Stoneheart Valley. Women, children, elders, anyone too young or old to fight. She organized the retreat while my brothers and I gathered what warriors we could find."
"How many defended the valley?"
"Forty-seven." The number burns like an old wound. "Against three hundred. But we knew the terrain, knew every stone and stream. We thought that would be enough."
Lady Eirian says nothing, but I see understanding in her storm-gray eyes. She's heard these tales before, from the other side. Victory celebrations in Thorne halls, toasts raised to successful border operations.
"The battle lasted until dawn. We held them at the river crossing, made them pay for every bridge, every ford. But numbers tell their own story."
Korann fell first, my youngest brother, barely eighteen summers and eager to prove himself worthy of warrior's braids. A crossbow bolt through the throat while he rallied the spearmen. He died trying to speak my name.
Theron followed an hour later, cut down defending the village well. His war-cry echoed off the valley walls as he charged alone into a dozen spearpoints. Brave unto death, stupid unto the end.
"By morning, they controlled the valley. The evacuation was successful - most of our people escaped into the high caves. But the cost..." I open my eyes, finding Lady Eirian watching me with something approaching sympathy. "Half our warriors dead or dying. Two of my brothers among them."
"I'm sorry." The words sound genuine, carrying weight beyond mere politeness. "Loss like that changes a person."
"Changes everything." I stand and pace to the herb garden, needing movement to contain the restless energy these memories always stir. "I found my mother at the evacuation site, tending wounded who would never fight again. She was binding Jorak's leg when the runner brought news that both my brothers had fallen."
The sound she made haunts me still. Not a scream or wail, but a low keening that seemed to rise from earth itself,mourning made manifest. Kethara the Ironspear, who had never shown weakness before enemy or ally, crumbled like a tower built on shifting sand.
"She died that morning, of grief and shame and rage too vast for any heart to contain. The healers called it heart-failure, but I knew better. She died because she could not bear to live in a world where her sons bled out on foreign soil while she organized retreats."
The silence stretches between us, heavy with implications neither of us wishes to voice. In the quiet, I hear water bubbling up from deep places, steam hissing against stone, and the subtle whisper of growing things reaching toward light.
"And you became chief."
"The clan demanded vengeance. Blood for blood, raid for raid. They looked to me to lead them into fire." I turn back toward her, noting how she holds herself despite the bonds, dignity intact even in captivity. "So I did. For ten years, I led them into fire and brought them out again, usually victorious. Always diminished."
"Until you met my mother."
"Until I met your mother." The admission comes easier than expected. "She appeared at our borders during the worst plague outbreak we'd faced in living memory. Alone except for her guard, carrying remedies and knowledge that saved hundreds of lives."
The first time I saw Mirelle Thorne, she was elbow-deep in infected wounds, treating clan warriors with the same care she would show human patients. No hesitation, no disgust, just professional competence and quiet compassion.
"Why did she risk it? Why come to your people's aid when our nations were at war?"
"Because healing recognizes no borders," I reply, echoing words she spoke that first day. "Because she understood whatI was too angry to see - that my mother's death, your brothers' deaths, the endless cycle of raid and counter-raid, it all served no purpose beyond feeding graveyards."
Lady Eirian nods slowly, pieces falling into place in her mind. "So you allowed the meetings to continue. Shared knowledge, developed new techniques."
"More than that. I began to see possibility where I'd seen only enemies. Your mother showed me paths between the killing fields, ways forward that honored the dead without creating more graves."
The grotto's atmosphere seems different now, charged with potential rather than merely peaceful. Steam swirls in new patterns, and the light slanting down through crystal shafts takes on golden qualities that speak of afternoon approaching.
