Page 23 of Halfling
Orek nodded, licking his lips. “There are many sagas told about that time.”
“I imagine the truth is somewhere between the tapestries and the sagas.”
He nodded again, this time with an amused huff.
After another night swathed in blankets and furs, Sorcha was able to coax out a little more about his kin. They were the Stone-Skin clan, ruled by a brutal male named Krul. The orcs had always lived in clans, though Orek said there had been times they were more unified and others where they roamed rather than settled. From what he understood, a violent disagreement had fractured that last unification of the clans many years ago, and the Stone-Skins had left for their home in the crags near this forest, far away from other clans.
He admitted he’d seen almost as little of orcs outside his clan as he had of humans. Their nearest neighbors, the Sharp-Tooth and Green-Back clans, were also their hated enemies.
Sorcha was both pleased and a little amused when, after a morning full of questions, Orek finally asked one of his own.
“Do you have family?” he asked quietly, not knowing what floodgates he’d opened.
Perhaps he truly was curious or perhaps he wanted to distract her for a while. In either case, it worked—she couldn’t talk about her family and life in short, halting sentences. Once the words came, they gushed forth, a manifestation of her pain at being parted from them.
“Yes, a big one,” she said. “I’m the eldest of seven.”
“That’s…many younglings.”
“It’s a lot,” she laughed. “My mother needs all the help she can get.”
She told him of her mother, Aoife, and her father, Sir Ciaran. How their village of Granach still told of their epic love story, how gallant Sir Ciaran had saved Aoife and her family from being robbed by bandits and then how brave Aoife had come to his rescue later when he was attacked by wolves.
She spoke of how her father went into service for Lord Darrow in order to be close to Aoife and woo her, but was brief about how he would often leave with his liege lord on important matters of state. It was a sore subject for Sorcha; she missed her father even when he was home, for she knew, even as a little girl, that his presence was fleeting.
She spoke fondly of her many siblings. Connor and Niall were next after her, both grown men now and knights like their father. Beautiful, haughty Maeve had most of the boys, and even some girls, chasing after her like puppies in love. Shy, clever Calum always had his nose in a book, and between him and their next sister Blaire, the house’s library had grown considerably, stuffed with his science tomes and her books of poetry and fairy tales. And little Keeley, the surprise child. Aunt Sofie had thought Aoife beyond her childbearing years, but that hadn’t stopped Keeley from coming into the world, sunshine incarnate.
“You are from a large clan,” Orek remarked.
“Yes. And that’s just my family. My mother inherited the stables from her mother, so there’s always trainers and grooms there to work with the horses.” Aoife had taught all her children the family trade, but there was every expectation that Sorcha would take over the stables when the time came. Like many in Eirea, names, titles, and lands passed from mother to child. It had fallen out of fashion for the nobility, who followed the royal family in most things. Since the violent war of succession thirty years before, they had adopted a strict father to eldest son inheritance, as was the way of Pyrros to the south.
“Stables?”
“To house the horses. My mother’s family have been horse trainers for many generations. The best horses come from the Brádaigh stables,” she said with pride.
When she wasn’t helping her mother with all her siblings, Sorcha loved working with the horses. Though they could be cantankerous, they were usually more reasonable than her younger siblings. Fates, she missed them, worrying and wondering over them every other thought.
She had to turn her thoughts away from them before too long or else she’d dissolve into tears. For all that she’d dreamed of having her own adventures and making her own way, this sudden separation was more heartache than she could handle. That her fatherchosesuch separation…How could he bear it?
That ugly resentment, one she was guilty to admit had been festering inside her for much longer than just her capture, throbbed.
She turned away from it and back to her own questions, too uneasy to linger over it long.
Thinking of how surprised he seemed over her explanation of her family’s stables and horse training, she asked him about the animals of this forest and everything he’d seen. He took to the topic readily, for him at least, and found herself hoping they’d come across the enormous elk he described but not so much the ferocious boars.
It was in the early afternoon, after stopping for a quick midday meal by a gurgling stream, that she finally found one of the limits to her questions.
She phrased it carefully, not even as a true question. He said nothing of his parents, nothing of what it was like to live in an orc clan. But from the morsels he gave her, she couldn’t help remembering the terrifying sight of the orc who’d stuck his head into the tent, his ghastly profile and jutting tusks.
After watching a pair of scarlet cardinals flit through the trees, Sorcha finally said what had been burning in her mind all day.
“You don’t…look like the orcs. Not from what I saw, anyway.”
Not an accusation, not a question. A blank to fill however he wanted.
His shoulders went stiff and his nostrils flared in a silent huff.
Sorcha’s stomach swooped with nerves, already feeling the air shift. He withdrew, and she could nearly hear theclangof the doors to his mind crashing shut. Her cheeks burned with shame and embarrassment. She hated the feeling, had strove never to feel it by never upsetting her mother or disappointing her father with questions or truths that would pain them.
