by Logan Jacobs
“You think those women did that?” the skinny warg asked.
His companion looked at him for such a long second it was nearly comical before he shook his head.
“Nah,” he said. “No way. Those skinny little things are too terrified to do any more than run and scream. I think.”
I couldn’t help but sigh in relief. They still had no idea the deer women knew how to fight. We had the advantage.
And I wanted to keep it that way.
His hesitation was clear on his face, but it brought a wave of fear over his companion.
“We should get a move on,” the warg replied. “We need to keep looking for these bitches. Anything that can kill a fycan is bad news for us. Let’s get out of here.”
Suddenly, the warg below me lifted his grotesque, massive snout up in the air and took a long, horrible sniff. The sound grated on my eardrums like nails on a chalkboard, and at the same time, sent my heart into overdrive.
I didn’t want to have to kill these fuckers. We’d be just as lost as we were before. This was my ticket into the camp.
“You smell that?” the first warg demanded.
“What?” his partner asked, and then he lifted his own ugly maw into the air and took a long drag, like a chain smoker sucks in the nicotine of a cigarette. “Yeah, I do.”
What they smelled, I wasn’t totally sure. Until, slowly, the warg twisted its head, looked in the direction we’d come from, and then beyond us.
“Women,” they both said in unison.
“It was those bitches!” the skinny warg snapped. “They’ve picked up some sort of shooting weapon.”
“We have to get this back to the bosses right away,” his fat companion replied.
And then they took off out of the clearing, in the exact direction we needed to follow.
We may have lost our secret weapons advantage, but that didn’t matter too much, because we were about to find their base camp.
The four of us waited for a long minute before we dropped down from the trees.
“They know about the bows,” Ainsley hissed. “That is not a good thing, Ben.”
“It’s alright,” I reassured her. “Because pretty soon, it won’t matter whether or not they know you can fight. Right now, we’ve got two things going for us. They don’t know where our camp is, and by the end of the day, we’ll know exactly where they make their home.”
“Ben, they could smell us,” Mira pointed out. “That must be how they track the women.”
“Snouts like a dog,” I grumbled.
“We can mask our scent,” Jemma interjected. “We need a little meyr berry, though. Ainsley, help me look.”
The deer women quickly disappeared into the trees as they searched the forest for this berry they wanted, and Mira and I just shrugged at each other as we waited.
When they reappeared, the women each held large handfuls of a bright red berry, nearly the size of a cherry.
“Here, smash them in your hands and rub them on your body,” Ainsley instructed.
Mira and I each took a large handful of the berries, and I rolled one in my right hand and squeezed. Instantly, I was met with the most putrid, horrendous scent I’d ever had the displeasure of smelling in my entire life. It smelled like a cross between baby shit and skunk discharge.
“Gods,” I coughed as the stench attacked my nostrils. “What is that?”
“The smell,” Jemma replied with a shrug. “It is strong enough that no creatures can smell our scent over it.”
“I can see why.” Mira gagged as she, too, squeezed a berry and then smeared it into her armpits.
“Here goes nothing,” I sighed.
I lifted an arm and rubbed the horrifying scent all over my armpit, and I took extra care to make sure it got all the way through my hair and onto the skin.
Yeah, this was a smell I’d never need again once this mission was over. If I never saw another meyr berry in my life, I could die a perfectly happy man.
I squished and rubbed until all of the berries had been smeared onto my body. I looked down at my clothes, which were now a mixture of blue and red, like some sick tie dye job, and I realized the berries even masked the metallic smell of the blood that covered me.
Ainsley, Jemma, and Mira all had their own red stains on their clothes and skin, and Mira had even rubbed some of the berries onto her cheeks and forehead. They almost looked like marks from a pagan blood ceremony, and the thought made me laugh out loud.
“What?” the warrior demanded. “Do I have something on my face?”
Her dark lips twitched up with a smile, but her grin disappeared when she got another whiff of the berries.
“It is not a pleasant smell, I am sorry,” Ainsley giggled.
“It’s fine,” Mira gagged. “This is the life of a warrior.”
“Ladies, shall we?” I asked the group.
The women nodded, and we turned our attention to the massive footprints in the ground.
Their path was clear, even in the dim light of the evening sun. I figured we had about two more hours of sunlight before it disappeared completely, and I planned to use that to our advantage.
We walked for close to an hour through the trees, with our eyes all glued on the footprints before us. The wargs had walked in the weirdest zig-zag pattern through the trees and bushes, but the whole time they headed in a sort of diagonal. I’d been right, at least, that if we’d just gone west with the sun we would have ended up near the camp.
As we got closer and closer to where I guessed the beach must be, we heard footsteps approaching.
A lot of footsteps.
“Into the trees,” I whispered.
Quickly and lithely, Ainsley and Jemma scrambled up the nearest tree trunk. Mira and I weren’t so quick or lithe, but we made it into the cover of the leaves before we were caught by the wargs.
A lot of wargs. There must have been a hunting party of some sort, because six wargs traipsed through the forest just below us.
“Do you smell that?” one of them asked as they passed.
“It’s those stinking berries,” another one answered. “Nasty things.”
The smell didn’t faze them, though, and they walked right on past us.
Just as we were all ready to climb down and follow, we heard a rustling on the forest floor about ten feet to our right. Another warg emerged, a lone wolf this time, and he followed the same path his six brethren had only moments before.
Jemma appeared on the branch right behind me then, silent and limber.
“There are many wargs coming, Ben,” she murmured into my ear. “I climbed through the trees and saw them. I do not think the forest floor is safe.”
As if to prove her point, two more wargs passed through the forest beneath us and went in the same direction as their peers.
“We can utilize the trees,” Ainsley murmured. “Jemma and I can watch below. We will track them from up here.”
“That is absolutely genius.” I grinned.
Slowly and carefully, we crept through the trees as the wargs passed below us, all on the same path. Sometimes, there were parties of five or more, and sometimes just one or two of them would walk through the forest below.
One thing was for sure, though. I’d seriously underestimated the number of wargs on this damn island. I’d figured there were maybe twenty or thirty of them, but at this point, I’d already counted forty-three.
Which meant the orcs had done a bang-up job on taking over this island for themselves, beyond just the kidnappings and killings. It was almost like they’d decided to make it a home for these sick little pets of theirs.
I stepped from branch to branch, and I was careful to keep my body near the trunk in case I slipped and needed to grab onto something.
Mira did slip, once, and broke a branch. It fell down to the forest floor, right at the feet of a warg and his five buddies.
For a moment, we waited with baited breath as he bent down to examine the branch, and then turned
to look up into the trees, but he couldn’t see past the leaves.
Finally, the warg squinted and then shrugged.
“Must’ve been a fycan,” he growled. “I’m hungry for some cat meat.”
And then they moved on.
We’d managed not to blow our cover, so we followed the wargs all the way to the edge of the forest.
What we saw there made my blood absolutely boil.
The orcs had knocked down a huge semi-circle of trees, about a hundred yards across and half a football field deep, and built an entire camp I hadn’t been able to see from the tree the day before.
It was like a fucking town.
There were little huts and tents, fires and seating, with orcs laughing and having a good time, as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
I wanted so fucking bad to just jump in there and shoot an arrow through all their meaty hearts, but I knew that would be a stupid idea.
So, for the moment, I sat there and observed them from up in the trees, high above the camp, and plotted my next move.
Chapter Nine
I took in the massive village for a long moment. The wargs all seemed to be coming back for the night, but they weren’t alone. There were tons of orcs around, too.
After a moment, I glanced over at Mira, Ainsley, and Jemma, and I jerked my head up at the branches above us to indicate I wanted to get higher.
They all instantly nodded, and we climbed up another thirty or so feet until we were out of earshot of our enemies.
The camp had disappeared behind the canopy below us, but I could still feel it there, like a black void filled with disgusting energy.
“There’s so many,” Ainsley breathed, and I could see she was holding back tears.
“I know.” I nodded, and my heart ached at the way her clear blue eyes gazed down through the branches to where the orcs’ camp sat far below us. “But right now, we can’t focus on the number. We need to get some sort of idea of how they operate. Where we can hit them first … ”
I trailed off, and what I didn’t want to say out loud was what I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about.
There were so many. I hadn’t even been able to get an accurate count yet of the number of orcs and wargs in that camp, but I knew they outnumbered us, sure as hell. And they outnumbered us even if we actually had a full army of fifty women.
Which, honestly, we really didn’t.
The women weren’t battle ready. Ainsley and Jemma could hold their own, but they were the only ones out of the entire village. I’d thought we’d have more time to plan and train, but I wasn’t so sure now that I’d seen a fucking orc village on this island. Who knew how fast they’d manage to swarm into the island’s interior? More wargs, more orcs, and less hiding spots for the women. Which meant we’d have a battle on our hands faster than I wanted.
One thing was for sure, though. Mira and I couldn’t take them all on ourselves. I needed to come up with a strategy, a different plan of attack.
“Ben,” Mira murmured and put a hand on my thigh in comfort. She knew me too well and could already tell the wheels in my mind had started to spin out of control.
“We need backup,” I sighed.
“What do you mean?” Jemma asked.
“I mean we need more fighters,” I replied. “I hadn’t expected to find an army’s worth of orcs when we ventured out here, and even a Dragon King can’t defeat an entire army by himself.”
“What should we do?” Ainsley asked.
Her big eyes were full of nothing but trust, and as I looked into their clear blue depths, I snapped myself out of whatever funk of defeat had taken a hold of me.
I couldn’t give up, and I wouldn’t. These women needed me to come up with a plan. They trusted me to save not only them, but also their home.
And that was just what I planned to do.
“Let’s get the lay of the land first,” I instructed. “We can go back down there and see if they give us any useful information, maybe get a look at what weapons they have. There’s got to be something we can use.”
“Then, my king, that is what we will do,” Mira replied with a smile.
We climbed quietly back down the trees and dropped to the forest floor just outside the village, but we were careful to keep low to the ground and not be seen by the wargs or the orcs.
Just as we’d started to creep around the outskirts of the village, a warg suddenly burst out of the trees about twenty feet to our right.
He held the arrow, the one the first two wargs we’d encountered had yanked from the fycan, in his hands. I didn’t recognize this warg, but he raised the arrow above his head like a trophy.
A moment later, the fat warg we’d seen before burst forth from the trees, too. He was pissed, though, and it was written across his features as he barreled after the other warg, who was, apparently, a thief.
“Give it back, Dirk!” the fat warg bellowed.
I watched wide-eyed as Dirk spun around and shook his massive, ugly head. He had about a foot on the fat orc and held the arrow proudly aloft, just above his head.
“No!” Dirk snapped. “You should not have kept this from the masters, Fand. I’ll show them, and you’ll get the punishment you deserve. Masters!”
Dirk spun on his heel and stomped through the camp toward the center hut, out of which emerged a fat orc with tusks that protruded from his lower jaw and a hunk of tarrel meat in his hand.
For a second, I felt a slight pang of pity for the wargs. The way they referred to the orcs as masters almost made me feel a little bad for them.
Until I remembered how many people they’d killed. Then that bad feeling was gone instantaneously.
“What?” the master orc spat. He tore another bite from the hunk of meat in his hand and chewed it with such ferocity I could actually see little flecks of spittle fly from his mouth and land on the warg’s face.
Absolutely disgusting. These guys all needed to die, if only as punishment for their lack of hygiene.
“Fand has kept something from you!” Dirk exclaimed.
He held the arrow aloft and presented the bloodied wood to the orc like it was a huge brick of gold, and not some nasty, splintered arrow.
The orc looked down at it, squinted his beady eyes, chewed his meat slowly, and then looked back up at Dirk.
“You found this?” he demanded.
The tone of his voice was so angry and belligerent that Dirk shrank back a little, despite the fact that the warg was nearly double the height of the orc.
“N-no.” Dirk shook his head. “Fand found it in the forest hours ago and did not tell you. He said it was his prize.”
“I did not!” Fand suddenly interrupted as he barreled forward and prostrated himself at the orc’s feet like the guy was the King of England. “I planned to show you, Master.”
My stomach turned completely over inside of me. The master orc just had this feel to him, like he knew he was better than everyone else.
He was the one I wanted to kill first. I knew that for damn sure.
The orc turned the arrow over and over in his hands, and he examined it from every single angle, like he needed to draw a mental map in his mind of the broken, bloodied weapon.
Finally, he glanced back up at Fand and Dirk.
“You found this in the forest?” he asked the fat warg.
The tone of the question was low, but even I could hear the threat that laid underneath.
Beside me, Ainsley and Jemma were tense, and their eyebrows were both furrowed and creased with worry.
“This probably isn’t going to end well,” I murmured.
The women kept their eyes straight ahead, and they were laser focused on the master orc.
A circle of wargs and orcs had formed around the party of three outside the hut, and the crowd watched with morbid curiosity in their eyes as Fand struggled to find the right words.
“Yes, master,” the fat warg finally whispered, and his voice was hoarse with fear. “I
t was in a fycan.”
“And where were the women?” the orc asked.
His eyes were cast downward as he stared at the arrow, but the fact that he didn’t need to look at the warg only made him more terrifying.
Fand slowly took a step back, but before he could even think of taking another, two orcs appeared behind him and pushed him right at the master.
“Well?” the master pressed, and he raised his beady black eyes to stare Fand down once more.
“There were no women,” Fand finally breathed.
“Liar!” Dirk bellowed. He was too caught up now, desperate for his master’s approval. “I heard you telling the story. You said Mant smelled the women. You thought they’d moved on, but you didn’t bother to check.”
A snitch. Of course. I recognized the type, and despite the fact that I hated the wargs with every fiber of my being, there was something about Dirk’s tone that disgusted me even more.
I had to force myself to sit back, though. As much as I would have loved to jump out there and slaughter all of these despicable, crazed beings, I was no idiot. I knew I wasn’t a match for the hundred or so orcs and wargs I’d be faced with if I did act on my impulses. All I’d do would be to get the four of us killed, and that was the last thing we needed.
So, I just forced myself to observe. We were gaining valuable insight into the way these orcs worked, and I knew it would help us down the road.
“You smelled the women?” the master asked, and for the first time, I saw the rage that boiled below the surface. “Do you know where these arrows came from?”
Fand shook his head, but said nothing.
“You are useless,” the orc master snapped.
The fat warg could do nothing but shake his head slowly.
The master’s lip curled up, and he shifted his gaze from Fand to the two orcs who stood behind him.
Then the master orc gave a single, slow nod.
Every warg in the camp clearly knew just what that nod meant, because a giant cheer sounded, and the circle of wargs grew tighter around the terrified Fand.
Now, I didn’t even think I wanted to watch.