by Logan Jacobs
“I need … a break …” she gasped out.
“Of course,” Ainsley said instantly, and the blonde woman spun around and sat protectively next to her sister.
“Ben, what’s wrong?” Mira finally asked the question she’d been dying to know the answer to for the last ten minutes. “You have this look on your face I do not like.”
“They’re going to burn the island,” I sighed.
“What?” Jemma gasped, and her wide eyes nearly popped out of her pale face.
“We overheard the orcs talking,” Ainsley explained. “They have a plan with … oil? I am not sure what that was.”
“Not good stuff.” I grimaced. “It’s fuel for fire. You light oil on fire, and this whole place will go up in flames in no time flat. Their plan is to force us to run onto the beach, where they’ll no doubt have an army waiting for us and a ship to cart all of you off to their home island.”
Mira’s gold eyes grew dark and angry.
“They’d destroy an entire island for that?” she spat. “Monsters.”
“We’ve got to find a way to stop them,” I told the group. “Destroy their oil supplies before they can put their plan into motion. They said the wargs are spreading barrels of oil out over the beach on the other side of the island. Which means we need to find those barrels and send them into the ocean before they can light them up. Now, who’s with me?”
Chapter Ten
It took the five of us the rest of the day to make it back to the village. Kella was so weak she was forced to stop and rest every few minutes, so Mira and I ended up taking turns carrying her on our backs. Otherwise, it would have taken us a whole week to get back.
The entire time, my thoughts were wrapped up in the conversation we’d overheard. The orcs' strategy was really bad news, but there was no time frame, so we had no idea when this plan would be put into motion.
I had half a plan figured out by the time we reached the village, but step number one was to let the women know what we were dealing with.
We climbed up the main tree as dusk fell over the forest, and as soon as we landed on the main platform, Theora raced out of her tent and leapt across the vine bridges in excitement.
“They’re back!” she yelled, but the brunette quickly skidded to a halt when her eyes landed upon Kella, and then she gasped. “Could it be? Has the Goddess blessed us this much? Is she this kind?”
Despite the fact that Kella looked like she was about to collapse, a smile flickered at the edge of her lips.
“Hello, Theora,” she murmured.
Theora stifled a cry and flung herself into Kella’s arms. It was the first time I’d seen the hardened brunette look so vulnerable, and it tugged at my heartstrings.
A crowd very quickly gathered around us after that. The women babbled in excitement at Kella’s rescue, and each took turns hugging her and crying over the fact that she was still alive.
I smiled as I watched the mass reunion. This was what I wanted, to save people and thwart the bastard orcs at every turn.
“You did well, my king.” Mira appeared next to me and rested her head on my shoulder with a smile.
“We both did,” I replied as I wrapped my arm around her and held her to me while we looked on.
Finally, the greetings and tears were over, and Ainsley turned to me with a worried, expectant look.
Looked like it was time for the bad news.
“What is wrong?” Theora asked with a frown as she glanced between Ainsley and me.
I stepped forward so I could look at the entire village of women, and then I took a deep breath.
“As you have probably guessed from Kella’s appearance, we found the orc camp.”
The crowd immediately broke out into murmurs, and then a thousand questions came at me at once.
“How many are there?”
“What do they want?”
“Can we defeat them?”
So many voices and fearful looks assaulted me that I had to raise a hand and ask for silence.
“We’ve got a problem,” I finally said when the crowd fell quiet. “The orcs have a plan. It seems like they got tired of waiting around and hoping the wargs would catch all of you. Now, they plan to smoke you out.”
“What’s that mean?” Sarayah asked.
I looked into her beautiful green eyes and sighed.
“They’re planning to set the forest on fire and force you to run into their camp, where they can capture you,” I told them.
Immediately, as I knew I would be, I was met with gasps, cries, and a whole lot of fear.
“They want to burn the forest down?”
“The Goddess Nira would never allow it!”
“What do we do, Ben?”
The women all looked at me when that last question echoed around the village.
At the moment, I didn’t have a great answer for them. My first instinct was to tell them everything would be perfectly fine and there was nothing to worry about, but I didn’t want to lie to them. They needed to know it would take a hell of a lot of determination to find a way to thwart this plan.
“Here’s the deal,” I told them. “I don’t know when this is going to happen. I know they’re putting barrels full of fuel at the edge of the forest, and I know that once that’s ready, a ship will arrive ready to kidnap all of you guys when you run from the burning oil. And on top of that, they know you guys can use bows now. They found one of our arrows after we were attacked by a group of fycan. So, we must proceed with extra caution.”
“No, we should leave,” Sarayah announced, and to my surprise, the brunette stepped out of the crowd and came up right next to me, so she could face the crowd.
“Sarayah,” Ainsley warned, but the brunette threw up a hand to keep the blonde woman silent.
“No.” Sarayah shook her head. “We tried it this way, the way the serpent man and woman insisted. We tried to change our ways and fight like they wanted. We made Ainsley our leader, like they wanted. We stayed put, like they wanted. And now, we will die if we listen to what they want. We need to leave the island, escape somewhere else before we are captured or killed by the invaders. Ben and Mira came here from the sea. They can build another vessel to take us to the island they hail from, where we will be safe among the serpent women.”
“But that’s not our home,” Ainsley protested, and she stepped up next to Sarayah and stared the crowd down herself. “Has Ben not helped us thus far? Has he not shown us the Goddess wants us to change our ways, to become stronger? We have eaten meat, and we have grown stronger. We have set traps to kill the wargs and learned how to fight for ourselves, and no one else has been taken from us. Kella was even returned to us! So, I trust Ben to show us how to beat the invaders. But more than that, I trust the Goddess wishes for us to stay and defend our home.”
“How do you explain this, then?” Sarayah demanded. “The Goddess cannot wish for us to defend our home if she throws us into dire situations like this, where we have no chance of winning. How many of the invaders were there?”
That question stopped Ainsley short, and the strawberry blonde woman fumbled for words as she tried to find a way to answer Sarayah’s question without feeding straight into her plan.
“It doesn’t matter how many there were,” I cut in sternly. “That is not the point.”
“Ben, you are not one of us,” Sarayah snapped with her green eyes ablaze, and I stepped back again.
Fine. If she wanted to debate this out among her villagers, I’d let her do just that. I was confident the women wouldn’t want to leave.
“Listen,” I told her, “I might not be one of you, but I’ve helped you out more in the last few weeks than you were able to do by yourselves in years. You can’t give up now, especially since it would be nearly impossible to get you all off the island without a ship. We don’t have time to build anything, so you have no choice but to fight.”
“But we are not close!” Sarayah shook her head, and for a split second, her
facade faltered.
I could see underneath, she was afraid.
No, not afraid. Terrified. The poor woman was completely terrified.
I couldn’t blame her, either. I’d only been here a few weeks, but this had been years of her life. Now, it seemed like it had finally come to a head. And they were about to lose.
“How many would like to leave?” Ainsley asked the crowd of women. “We should vote on this, the way Ben showed us to.”
She surveyed the crowd as, slowly, about fifteen women raised their hands.
But only fifteen.
The rest of the women shook their heads.
“We trust Ben,” Netta declared as she swung her red hair over her shoulder, and her green eyes were determined. “He has helped us so much already. We need to trust him to do this.”
Sarayah surveyed the crowd as she slowly realized she’d lost this time.
“Fine,” the brunette spat. “But you all will get us killed, and I will not be around to see it.”
Before I could retort, Sarayah stomped off into her tent angrily.
“Do not mind her,” Ainsley sighed. “She has always had a temper.”
“I didn’t think any of you had a bad temper,” I laughed.
“Sarayah is not just any one of us,” Kella spoke to me for the first time since I’d rescued her.
I didn’t mean to, but I turned to her in surprise at the words.
Her voice was soft, much in contrast to Ainsley. Ainsley’s voice was beautiful, but she was much louder and more musical than Kella was. Kella sounded almost like a summer breeze when she spoke, gentle and calming, but so quiet I could almost miss it.
“Well, I can see that.” I smiled at her, but I wondered what she meant about the brunette.
Before Kella could say another word, though, her knees buckled underneath her.
In a flash, I instinctively threw out my hands to catch her before she could crash down onto the wooden platform.
“Kella!” Ainsley gasped.
“I am okay,” the older sister murmured as she sagged in my arms. “Just weak. I have not had proper nutrition in a very long time.”
The older woman weighed almost nothing, and I was able to sweep her up in my arms quickly. Then I took two fingers and checked her pulse. Her heartbeat was faint and stuttery, but it was still there, thank the gods. Her chest moved up and down, but just slightly, as she pulled in a tiny amount of oxygen and breathed out even less.
“We need to get her to the healer’s tent,” I announced.
Ainsley nodded, and the two of us rushed across the vine bridge and burst through the tent.
Thornen, the older woman I’d met my first day in the village, spun around in shock when we burst inside. She appeared to have been the only woman who hadn’t come out to the platform to greet us.
“Kella!” she gasped when she caught sight of the woman in my arms, but the black-haired woman didn’t let her shock impede her for a moment. She just swooped down on us as I laid Kella down gently on one of the logs to the side of the tent.
“She’s weak,” I told the healer. “I don’t think they fed her much of anything. And they--”
I couldn’t even bear to say the next words.
Thornen looked up at me, and understanding flooded her soft eyes.
“I know what they’ve done to her,” she murmured.
Thornen turned back and started to examine Kella, and next to me, Ainsley let out a shuddery breath.
I turned to see she was holding back tears. The beautiful woman twisted her hands together and apart, over and over again, as she watched Thornen work, and one of her legs shook.
The body language was all so very not-Ainsley that it gave me pause for half a second before I burst into action.
I’d always been that kind of a guy in a crisis. I was never the one to freeze or freak out, and I was always the first one to comfort other people when I needed to.
And Ainsley had the look of someone who needed some comforting.
“Hey,” I murmured to her. “Come here.”
She was instantly in my arms. Her breath was hot and fast against my chest, and she buried her face in my sternum as her nails dug into my back, like she was desperate to touch every single part of me she possibly could.
I felt her chest shudder as she let out a silent sob, and I couldn’t imagine what the hell was in her mind right now. I could tell Ainsley and her sister were close, of course, but it was more than that. To have lost her sister, found her, only to be faced with the possibility of losing her once more?
That was a fate I’d only wish on the orcs.
“It’s going to be fine,” I promised the blonde woman.
And damn it, I’d make sure it was fine.
I held Ainsley to me and stroked her soft strawberry blonde hair while Thornen worked. The black-haired healer examined every bit of Kella the way a doctor in my world would have before she finally sat back on her heels and turned to me.
“She’s weak,” Thornen said. “I’ve never seen a person this weak who was still alive.”
“I would not allow them to kill me that easily.” Kella managed a small smile.
Ainsley let out a squeak against my chest, but that was all she allowed before she shoved a fist into her mouth.
“What can I do?” I asked Thornen. “What do you need?”
“We need meat,” she replied. “We need to make some sort of a broth for her, to give her nutrients while her body cannot process solid food.”
“I’ll go now,” I replied.
I pulled slowly away from Ainsley and looked her right in the eyes, but I waited until she met my gaze before I spoke.
“I’m going to get a tarrel,” I told her. “We’ll save your sister, and then we’ll come up with a plan to save the village. I’m not going to let anything happen. Do you trust me?”
It was all Ainsley could do to nod.
“Go,” Kella reassured her sister.
“I’ll take care of her,” Thornen told me, and she led Ainsley to a seat as I walked out of the tent.
The village seemed to have mostly gone back to normal when I walked out. I could tell tensions were still high, though, and Sarayah was still nowhere to be seen.
I was nearly as nervous to leave the village alone and unprotected now as I’d been when I left my island of serpent women. Despite what I knew--that the wargs couldn’t climb, that I’d built plenty of traps, that Mira and I had taught the deer women how to defend themselves--I couldn’t help but be anxious about the unknown brevity of the orcs at this stage.
So, I decided to do something about it.
“Theora,” I called as the brunette passed the armory tent.
“Yes, Ben?” she asked as she came inside the tent. Then the brunette gave me a warm smile as she looked down at the bow in my hands.
“I want to set up a watch rotation,” I told her. “Who do you think is the best choice for that? Who could stay awake at night when they’d rather be asleep? Or tucked under the covers with a good book?”
“We do not have books,” she said with a laugh. “I do not know what those are. But I can suggest a few women who have staying power. Come.”
Theora led me out of the tent and over to a group of women who were gathered in front of the cooking tent.
“Merni, Ona, and Tani,” she said as she pointed to two brunettes and a redhead.
“What do you need, Ben?” the brunette named Merni asked me sweetly.
“I’d like the three of you to be a watch group at night,” I told them. “You stay up in a rotation, one at a time, and watch over the village during the night. If there’s a warg attack, you sound this.”
I handed them the makeshift bell I’d formed out of clay and vines. Ona gave it an exploratory shake, and she smiled at the clunky, definitely not musical sound that it made.
“How interesting,” she said.
The sound had made a few of the other women in the camp turn their heads curious
ly, and before long, I had a group of ten volunteers ready to take rotating night shifts.
“Will Kella be alright?” Jemma asked when I’d walked away from Theora.
I hadn’t even seen the slim auburn-haired woman come up behind me.
“We need to get her some meat,” I explained. “Want to come?”
“If it’ll save Kella, absolutely.” Jemma nodded vigorously.
We grabbed our bows and were down the tree in no time flat.
Jemma surprised me with her grit and determination sometimes. She didn’t say a single word as we headed straight to the watering hole to find a tarrel to kill.
It seemed the Goddess was on our side today in more ways than one. The moment we crept up to the watering hole, I saw a beautiful, doe eyed tarrel at the edge of the stream, and the deer-like creature lapped up water without a care in the world.
It didn’t even take me a full breath to nock an arrow and let it fly straight into the animal. The poor beast didn’t even have the chance to take a final breath before it collapsed, and Jemma and I didn’t waste a second. We tied the carcass up, took all the entrails out, drained the blood, kept the heart and liver for stew, and cut up the meat quicker than we’d ever done before.
It was all done in silence, and I could tell it was exactly what Jemma and I both needed. There were those moments it was damn nice to just be quiet with someone.
“Ben,” Jemma said as we made our way back to the village, “I wanted to thank you, for all you have done for us. I do not believe you have been granted a proper thank you.”
I was about to protest and tell her there was no thanks necessary when Jemma looked up at me from under long, dark lashes and flashed me a shy smile.
Oh.
She meant that kind of a thank you.
Well, there was absolutely no way I’d turn that kind of a thank you down.
“Jemma, you are very welcome,” I replied in my most gentlemanly voice. “But it’s not hard to do all of this for beautiful women.”
I let the clear flirtation slip into my tone then and enjoyed the way it caused Jemma to blush a bright, brilliant red.
“Beautiful women,” she repeated and averted her gaze. “I’ve never been called that before.”