by Logan Jacobs
About eight feet away from the orcs was a cage, just like the one I’d found Kella in, but, unlike Kella’s cage, this one was open. Inside, Yin and Kola sat against the far wall, and they shivered in fear as they stared at the open cage door. Yin had buried her hands in her soft amber hair, and she pressed her elfin face into her knees, which were pulled up to her chest. Kola’s dark brown hair was frizzed out, and her dark green eyes darted around her as she watched for any sign of danger.
But why hadn’t they run out of the cage?
“Ben,” Netta said again.
“Just a sec,” I replied as I shifted my body ever so slightly on the branch so I could have a better view of the open cage.
I could see now why the women hadn’t tried to make a break for it. Four wargs were hidden just beyond the cage in the shadows of the forest, and they prowled about and gnashed their fangs to intimidate the women as they waited.
Some trap. The orcs wanted to lure other women into the cage by leaving the door open and using Yin and Kola as bait, but once the “rescuers” were inside the cage, the hidden wargs would come out and keep any of the prisoners from escaping.
But the wargs couldn’t do that if they were dead.
The beginnings of a plan started to form in my head, but I didn’t get much of a chance to flesh it out, because just then, something small and hard smacked into my left temple.
“Ow,” I hissed quietly. I brought my hand up to the small welt and glared in the direction from which the tiny projectile had originated.
And there was Jemma, with another nut in her hand ready for launch.
What the fuck was she doing?
I did my best to convey with my angry eyes that now was absolutely not the time for fucking games, but Jemma didn’t look so playful as she pointed behind me with her own eyes wide.
That couldn’t be good.
Slowly, I turned my head in the direction she’d pointed, and my breath caught in my throat when I saw what occupied the tree next to us.
Fycans.
Nine of them. That I could see.
The cats were spread lazily among the branches. Their tails hung down and flicked through the cool air every few seconds, and their massive eyes were closed.
Apparently, it was time for the afternoon pride nap.
My heart thudded so loud in my chest it was like a motor, and I debated our next move for a long moment.
First of all, there was no way the four of us could take on those nine cougars up here in the trees. And if we took the fight to the ground, the orcs and wargs would join in, and that was definitely too many opponents when I was with three women who still weren’t proficient in hand-to-hand combat.
But, if I could find some way to knock the fycans out of the tree and sick them on the wargs and the orcs, maybe we’d have a fighting chance.
That left just one issue. The open cage. If the fycans hit the ground, I knew they’d go after whatever was alive and in their paths. These were predators, driven only by an insatiable need to hunt, and Yin and Kola could be caught in the crossfire.
I took another look at the cage down below. The door was open, but it looked like it would swing closed fairly fast on its hinges.
So, there was only one option, and if I knew Yin and Kola, they’d be smart enough to close that cage door the moment the first fycan hit the ground. The deer women were some of the smartest women I’d ever met, and I knew we’d all get through this if we worked together.
“Jemma, hand me a handful of those nuts,” I murmured.
The auburn-haired woman carefully peeled some of the small brown nuts from the branches of the tree and climbed over to hand them to me.
“Alright, we’re going to pelt the orcs with nuts,” I whispered to the women. “Get them up and angry so they’re making a bunch of noise. The fycans will wake up, hear the screaming, and go after them.”
“Will that work?” Netta asked with a worried frown.
“It will,” I told her.
It had to.
The only other options would be to start shooting either the orcs, the wargs, or the fycans from way up in the trees, and that would have terrible consequences. If we shot the fycans, their corpses would hit the forest floor and let the orcs know we were up in the trees. Plus, in all likelihood, the surviving massive cats would go after us at the same time.
This was the only way we’d all make it out alive.
So, as silently as we could, the four of us crept along the branches and positioned ourselves right above the three orcs. Just then, a fourth orc emerged from the forest and joined the others, but they all remained too quiet for us to hear their conversation.
But, hey, the more orcs to die by fycans right now, the less orcs we’d have to deal with later.
Across the clearing, the wargs milled about in front of the cage opening, and the beasts made very clear attempts to intimidate the two women, who remained huddled together against the back of the cage.
I glanced one last time at the fycans, who were still asleep, and I took a deep breath to brace myself.
“We have to be dead silent as soon as they start making noise,” I told the ladies under my breath.
They all nodded and, as one, we raised the first nuts and hurled them at the orcs with all of our might.
A split second later, we made contact. The orcs’ heads snapped up as the acorns pinged off their skulls, and the brutes peered up into the branches in confusion, but they couldn’t quite see us.
“What the hell was that?” one orc demanded.
“The trees probably just dropped some nuts on us.” A second bastard shrugged.
At that, we hurled more nuts at them.
I threw mine in quick succession, one after the other, and I hit the orcs in their fat foreheads, their meaty chests, and in their beady eyes.
“What the hell?” one of them roared.
The idiots grabbed their spears and shook them at the tree, but I was more interested in the fycans in the tree ten feet away.
Just as I’d suspected, the loud noise roused the cats from their sleep, and they glared around them before their massive eyes trailed down, in unison, to where the orcs stood in the clearing.
Everything happened in a flash next, and it was all I could do to keep track of the events.
All nine of the fycans let out angry roars, and they leapt down from the tree to the forest floor with their claws and fangs extended.
“Yin, close the cage!” Netta suddenly stood and hollered down at the captive women.
In the next instant, the orcs bellowed in surprise as the giant cats came after them, the cage door slammed shut, and the wargs rushed out of the forest in an attempt to help their orc masters.
The wolf-beasts were too slow, though.
Each of the four orcs had picked up a spear, but their bulky, slow muscles were no match for the lithe agility of the big cats.
One orc was torn in half by two fycans mere moments after the cats hit the ground. Another brute managed to stab his spear into the shoulder of one cat, only to have a second cat swipe at his back with massive claws and rip his entire body open.
The third orc didn’t even try to fight. He just dropped his spear and made a run for it. Apparently, his parents had never taught him that the most idiotic thing he could have possibly done was run from a wild animal. A fycan was on top of him quicker than he could even scream, and the cat pinned him to the ground and tore into his fleshy, fat body with the relish of an animal that was starving for an afternoon snack.
The fourth orc impressively managed to hold out a little bit longer than his comrades. He’d backed himself up against the trunk of a tree, and he held his spear straight out in front of him as he swiped at the empty air.
“Back off!” he warned the massive cats, and I was sure it was meant to sound threatening, but it came out more like a plea.
I took way more pleasure than I should have as I watched the entire ordeal. Finally, at least some of the orcs
got a taste of justice.
The final orc didn’t last too much longer, though. One of the fycans used its giant paw to smack the spear out of the orc’s hand, and then it was a free-for-all.
As for the wargs, they’d paused at the tree line once they saw how quickly the cats dealt with their masters. I was fairly sure the wolf-beasts thought they’d get away from the fycans with their lives, but suddenly, one of the cats sniffed the air and turned around to eye the four wargs.
Then it was a chase.
I listened as the wargs took off into the forest as fast as they could. They may have been nearly as fast as the deer women, but even they weren’t a match for the four-legged power that was the fycans. The so-called sacred cats were like cheetahs on steroids. I was pretty sure I even saw two of the massive cats give each other a playfully competitive nod before they sprang off into the forest after the wargs.
Within moments, we heard the wargs’ painful yelps echo out across the forest, and then … all was silent again.
The orcs and wargs were dead, we would get the women out of that cage, and no one would ever be the wiser. They would think it was just a big massacre by wild animals.
Or so I thought.
As I watched, however, a bumbling orc suddenly stepped into the clearing and had to ruin it. He must have heard the commotion and came to investigate, and he gasped when he saw the dead, eaten corpses of his friends. The orc was just about to turn and run off to warn all of his comrades, and probably grab backup to guard the cage, but I dropped down from the trees right behind him and slit his throat so fast he didn’t even have the chance to mutter a syllable.
As soon as his body thudded to the ground, I checked my surroundings to make sure no other orcs or wargs were hidden away.
After a moment, I determined the coast was clear. So, I motioned for the women to come down from the tree before I turned toward the cage, where Yin and Kola stood cowering against the back wall.
Jemma and I quickly ran over and yanked the door of the cage open, and the two captive women rushed forward and threw themselves into my arms.
“Thank you, Ben.” Kola shuddered, and tears streamed down her cheeks.
I stroked a hand through her brown hair as she cried into my chest, and I just waited for the women to calm down a little. I could see in their faces what an awful ordeal they’d been through, and it lit an angry fire in my belly.
As I stood there and comforted the crying women, I glared at the bodies of the deceased orcs with enough fury to drive a man mad.
Then, slowly, I turned my eyes toward the orc I’d killed. Thick, red blood still oozed from his neck, but it was a slow trickle now, and he was surrounded by a scarlet pool as his beady black eyes stared back at me, cold and glassy, like a doll’s.
The slit in his neck was perfect, and I knew his death had been necessary. I couldn’t have let him leave knowing the women were still in the cage, only to come back with backup and find the cage empty. That would have been even more disastrous.
But his dead body was the evidence of a practiced killer, and as much as I’d worked to turn the women into fighters and strong hunters, they were not practiced killers. The orcs knew this, despite the new development of the arrows, so the orcs would know this death wasn’t on any of the deer women.
Which meant they’d know someone else was on the island with them.
“We’ve got to go, now,” I ordered as I turned away from the orc’s corpse. “It’s time to put our plan in play. We need to get them before they get us.”
“Ben, what is the rush?” Jemma asked and caught my arm.
“They’ll know I’m here,” I told her in a solemn tone. “Well, maybe not me specifically, but they’ll know you guys have outside help. Which means they’ll try to set those barrels on fire as soon as they possibly can. So, we have to attack them before they attack us.”
Jemma looked at me for a moment, but I couldn’t read the expression in her yellow-green eyes. It wasn’t fear, exactly, but more like a nervous excitement. She’d wanted to defeat these motherfuckers for so long, and now, she was finally about to get her chance.
“Okay.” She nodded. “Maybe we should bury the body first?”
I shook my head, since I assumed Jemma wanted to be respectful toward these orcs, but they didn’t deserve that.
“That fucker can rot in the open air, for all I care,” I growled.
“I just thought it might keep the orcs off our trail for a little while,” she replied. “In case any more come back.”
A grin wider than any I’d ever felt spread across my face. Jemma was a fast study, and she’d picked up on the ways of war with a natural instinct.
“Good idea, but that’ll take some time, so we should just slash up his body and make it look like the fycans did it,” I said and then turned to the rest of the women. “Keep watch.”
Theora and Netta nodded, and they each wrapped an arm around Yin and Kola as they all turned to guard us.
Jemma and I walked over to the nasty orc. His mouth was half open, and a thick, purple tongue lolled out of his mouth.
“That is most horrifying.” Jemma grimaced as she looked at the corpse.
And the smell that came off him was a million times worse. It reminded me of the scene in Episode V of Star Wars, where Han has to cut open the dead tauntaun to shove Luke inside.
“Alright, let’s rip this thing up,” I told her.
We covered our noses with the front of our shirts and set to work. Jemma slashed the throat apart even farther so it looked like a giant claw had torn it open, while I ripped off an arm and a leg and threw them far away from the ugly, smelly orc. When we were done, I stepped back and admired our handiwork.
The orc really did look like it had been attacked by a giant cat.
Once we’d covered our tracks as best we could, the six of us trekked back to camp. Yin and Kola were mostly quiet, but every once in a while, one of them would let out a shuddery sigh, or I’d notice a tear slide down their cheeks.
I was just thankful I’d managed to rescue them before anything truly terrible had happened, like with Kella, or any of the women who hadn’t been allowed to stay on the island, and had been instead taken back to the island of the orcs.
I imagined it must be a nasty place, filled with ugly as fuck orcs and dark Mordor-like castles. One day, though, I’d destroy it all.
When we got back to camp, I found all of the women gathered on the main platform as they ran drills. Some lined up to practice their bow technique, others ran across the bridges and shot off arrows mid-leap. That was pretty damn impressive.
I sat there for a moment and watched as Sarayah stepped up to one of the vine bridges, picked up a bow, and took off at full speed. She nocked an arrow as she went, then turned to aim at a cloth target that had been tacked to a tree about fifty feet away. She leapt up about six feet into the air, aimed, and shot, before she came back down to the bridge and finished up her run.
The arrow landed perfectly, right in the center of the bullseye.
“Awesome.” I grinned at the sight.
Then I waved at Mira and Ainsley, who stood on the platform and whispered quietly to each other. Ainsley looked in her element like Mira did, and I realized the blonde deer woman made a fine warrior.
Finally, Ainsley’s blue eyes caught sight of me, then Yin and Kola behind me, and her face broke into a grin.
“They have returned!” the strawberry-blonde woman shouted out.
Everyone in the village instantly stopped what they were doing to rush toward us and embrace Yin and Kola. The two women were quickly swallowed up in a horde of their sisters as the women attended to their needs, but I knew they were in good hands.
“Hey,” I murmured as I walked up to Mira and Ainsley. “Everything seems to be going well.”
“We’ve got a shot.” Mira nodded, and her face was set in the same grim expression I’d seen before every other orc battle.
I’d grown used to t
he hard expression in her brilliant gold eyes. It wasn’t a look of worry or defeat, but of determination.
“Thank you, Ben, for bringing them back to us,” Ainsley said as she wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug, and for the first time, I noticed muscles along her arms and shoulders. The woman was by no means as strong as Mira, but there was a rippling tension in her biceps now, where before I’d felt nothing but skin and bones.
That brought a smile to my face.
“Don’t thank me just yet.” I tried to keep my tone light and joking, but Ainsley saw straight through me.
And Mira knew me much too well for that.
“Uh-oh,” the warrior snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. “I know that look.”
“What is it, Ben?” Ainsley’s brow furrowed as she looked at me, and she reached her right hand up to rub at the base of her horns, like she wanted to massage away a headache.
“We ran into a tiny problem on our rescue mission,” I informed the women. “So, the orcs will probably know you guys aren’t alone anymore pretty soon. In fact, they might already know.”
“You had to kill one of them?” Mira guessed as she met my gaze.
“Yep,” I said. “It was him or us. Jemma and I tried to make it look like a fycan did him in, but we don’t know for sure if it’ll be enough to convince those bastards. So, I think we need to have a war counsel and come up with a completed plan of action. Like, right now.”
“We must do this at dinner tonight.” Ainsley nodded vigorously. “The whole village must be there. We cannot make this decision on our own.”
I wasn’t sure I totally agreed with that, but I didn’t want to completely undermine Ainsley’s authority over her own people. They still had their culture and way of doing things, and so far, the things they had kept hadn’t caused me too much grief.
Ainsley went over to the rest of the village to announce the war counsel, and Mira sidestepped over to me and nudged me with her shoulder.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Do you think they’re ready?” the warrior murmured, and the question was quiet so it didn’t carry through the trees.