Chapter 6: The Scent of Prey (Part 1)

The fire had burned down to a low, orange murmur of embers by the time the moon climbed past the canopy's edge.

Lyra lay curled on her side in the nest of dry leaves Aelindra had scraped together for her, one arm tucked beneath her head, the other resting loosely across her stomach. The position did nothing to shield her---nothing could---but exhaustion had finally overpowered shame, and she had tumbled into a sleep so deep it felt like drowning. Her bare back rose and fell with slow, even breaths. The firelight painted her skin in shifting tones of amber and shadow, catching the curve of her hip, the soft swell of her breast where it pressed against the leaves, the darker triangle of hair between her thighs.

Aelindra sat with her back against a moss-furred oak three paces away, her bow laid across her knees, her quiver propped within arm's reach. She was not asleep---not quite. Her eyes were closed, her breathing slow, but her ears moved in tiny, constant adjustments, tracking the forest's nocturnal murmur: the rustle of a foraging mouse, the distant cry of a nightbird, the creak of old branches settling into the cool air. It was the half-sleep of a ranger who had spent decades learning to rest without ever fully relinquishing awareness.

She had not heard the orc approach.

Neither had Lyra.

The orc's name was Gruk, and he was alone because the hunting party's scoutmaster had sent him to retrieve a snare line set that morning along the eastern creek bed---a punishment detail for a dispute over dried meat rations that Gruk had lost, loudly. He was not a tracker by training, but he was patient when he needed to be, and he had learned long ago that moving slowly through the underbrush meant eating more often than moving fast.

He was two hundred paces from the snare line when the wind shifted and brought him a scent that stopped him mid-stride.

Human.

Female, from the undertone of it. Sweat-sour and unwashed, the sharp musk of someone who had been walking hard for days without a stream to bathe in. Beneath that, fainter but unmistakable, the cool green smell of elf---the dry, almost dusty scent of old forest magic woven into skin and leather.

Gruk's nostrils flared. He dropped into a crouch, his hand moving to the haft of the hand-axe tucked into his belt. His eyes, adapted to the darkness of the deep woods, swept the tree line ahead.

He saw the glow first: a faint orange pulse against the black trunks, too steady for a forest fire. A campfire, burned low. He crept closer, placing each bare, calloused foot with the care of a stalking predator, and the scene resolved itself through the gaps in the foliage.

A small clearing. A dying fire. An elf propped against a tree, motionless---asleep or close to it. And near the fire, curled on the ground like a discarded thing, a naked human female.

Gruk stared.

He had seen human women before---the clan raided the trade roads every few seasons, and there were always captives---but never one like this. Naked as a skinned rabbit, without even a scrap of cloth to shield her from the night. Her skin was smudged with dirt and old bruises, and her hair was a tangled mess of dark brown, but she was young and whole-limbed and, by the look of her, entirely unarmed.

A gift from the blood-moon, the old shaman would have said.

Gruk did not believe in gifts. But he believed in opportunity. A naked human, unguarded except for one sleeping elf---this was an opportunity so clean it practically handed itself to him.

He drew his axe, not to strike, but to hold ready. Then he began to circle the clearing, moving with the silence of a creature born to hunt in the dark.

Lyra dreamed of her old apartment.

She was standing in the shower, and the water was hot---gods, it was so hot, and she could feel the steam filling her lungs, and she was clean, finally clean, all the dirt and sweat and shame sluicing off her skin in grey rivulets---

A hand closed over her mouth.

Her eyes flew open. The dream shattered. She was not in a shower. She was on the cold ground, and there was a weight pressing down on her back, and something rough and huge was clamped over the lower half of her face, cutting off her breath.

She tried to scream. The sound came out as a muffled, pathetic whimper against a palm that smelled of earth and old blood.

"Quiet," a voice growled against her ear. It was not Aelindra's voice. It was deeper than any human voice she had ever heard, a gravelly rumble that vibrated through her skull. "You make noise, I break your neck. Understand?"

Lyra's heart slammed against her ribs. Her body went rigid with terror, every instinct screaming at her to thrash, to bite, to do something---but the weight on her back was immense, and the hand over her mouth was so large it nearly covered her from nose to chin, and she could feel the hard edge of something sharp pressing against the side of her throat.

She made herself nod. A tiny, jerky motion.

The weight shifted. The hand stayed clamped over her mouth, but another hand---equally huge, equally rough---grabbed her by the upper arm and hauled her upright as if she weighed nothing. Her feet kicked at the leaves, found no purchase, and then she was being dragged backward, away from the fire, away from Aelindra's sleeping form.

She twisted her head, desperate, and caught a glimpse of her captor.

It was one of the creatures from the camp. An orc. She had only seen them from a distance before, hunched shapes moving between tents, but this one was right there, close enough that she could see the texture of its grey-green skin, the heavy ridge of its brow, the small, deep-set eyes that glinted with a flat, calculating intelligence. Its lower jaw jutted forward, revealing the tips of yellowed tusks. It was wearing crude leather armor stitched with bone, and it smelled---gods, it smelled like a slaughterhouse floor.

No no no no no---

She bucked and kicked, her bare heels striking uselessly against the orc's shins. It grunted, unimpressed, and tightened its grip until she felt her bones creak.

"Fight later," it muttered, almost conversationally. "Fight in camp. Everyone watch. More fun."

It dragged her into the trees.

Behind them, the embers of the campfire pulsed once, twice, and then the clearing was empty except for a sleeping elf and the slowly fading scent of human terror.

The journey through the darkness was a blur of pain and panic.

The orc---Gruk, though Lyra did not know his name---moved through the forest with a speed that seemed impossible for something so large. Branches whipped past, lashing at Lyra's bare legs and arms. Her feet, already tender from days of walking, caught on roots and stones until she stopped trying to run and simply let herself be dragged, stumbling and gasping against the hand that never once loosened its grip on her mouth.

She tried to think. She tried to plan. But her mind was a white wall of fear, and every time she managed to grab hold of a coherent thought, the orc would yank her forward and it would shatter all over again.

Aelindra. Aelindra will wake up. She'll see I'm gone. She'll come.

The thought was the only thing keeping her from dissolving entirely.

After what felt like an eternity---though it could not have been more than ten minutes---the trees thinned, and the orange glow of firelight replaced the darkness. Voices reached her ears, deep and guttural, speaking a language she did not understand. The orc camp.

Gruk shouldered through a gap in a crude palisade of sharpened logs, and Lyra found herself in the middle of a nightmare.

The camp was smaller than she had remembered from Aelindra's description---perhaps a dozen tents made of stitched hides, a central fire pit where something that might have been a deer carcass was roasting on a spit, and scattered clusters of weapons, supplies, and bone piles that she did not want to examine too closely. And everywhere, everywhere, there were orcs.

They turned as Gruk entered. Conversations died. The crackle of the fire was suddenly the loudest sound in the clearing.

Lyra hung in Gruk's grip, her feet barely touching the ground, her naked body on full display for every pair of eyes in the camp. She could feel their gazes like physical things, crawling over her skin: her breasts, her belly, the exposed cleft between her legs. One of the orcs---a massive brute with a scar that split his face from forehead to jaw---let out a low, appreciative grunt.

"What's this?" one of them called out in the common tongue, thickly accented but understandable. "Gruk bring back a toy?"

"Found her in the woods," Gruk said, and there was a smug satisfaction in his voice. "Sleeping by a fire. No clothes. No weapons. Just her and an elf."

The scarred orc stepped closer, and Lyra tried to shrink back, but Gruk held her fast. The orc's eyes---small, yellow, and utterly without pity---traveled down her body with the slow deliberation of someone examining livestock.

"Elf," he repeated. "Where?"

"Asleep. Didn't wake."

"You kill it?"

Gruk hesitated. "Didn't need to. Took the human quiet. Elf doesn't know."

The scarred orc---the chieftain, Lyra realized with a sick lurch of her stomach---considered this. Then he shrugged, a massive roll of his shoulders, and turned his attention back to Lyra.

"She's scrawny," he observed. "But clean enough. Good teats. Good hips." He reached out a hand---thick-fingered, nails crusted with dirt---and before Lyra could twist away, he closed it around her left breast and squeezed.