Page 32 of Halfling
Sorcha glanced at the shopkeeper. For all that she was hovering over the map, a note of interest hung about her. If she’d been a cat, Sorcha could imagine her ears swinging toward her.
Hospitable she may not be, but Sorcha knew any good shopkeeper kept their ears open for good opportunities. The best ones also peddled information and gossip. Being from a small village herself, Sorcha knew how news was its own kind of currency. For all that the townsfolk hissed and wanted her gone, they’d be speaking about her over their cups for days.
Like any good shopkeeper, this woman wanted the goods, as it were.
“Yes,” she said. “The Darrowlands.”
“Hmph. You’ve a ways to go.”
She turned the map to face Sorcha, pointing with a bent finger to her scrawled additions. She’d marked Birrin with a B and filled in a winding river, linking it up with a river she knew in the north. Sorcha could follow the river to more familiar lands, but the distance stifled any relief she may have felt.
Nearly the whole map lay between her and the capital of Gleanná. And Dundúran, with Granach nearby, was northwest of it, another five days of travel and not even on the top, northern edge of the map.
Sorcha had known it would be at least a fortnight of travel—it was how long it took her captors to travel here and they’d known their way and had horses. But seeing it laid out so plainly…
She blinked back another stinging wave of tears.
“Best keep the river on your left,” said the shopkeeper, tracing the squiggle with her finger. “Everything across it until the foothills is orc country.”
“These are other towns?” Sorcha tapped the other letters the woman had written.
“Yup.”
“And will they be as hospitable as you folk?”
“Humph. More or less. Least until you get into Eirea proper. We don’t take real kindly to strangers.”
“I noticed.”
The shopkeeper leveled her with a flinty gaze. “It’s hard to sympathize with your lot when we’ve been begging for years for the crown to do something about the borders.”
“But the borders…”
“Who do you think they were taking first? Less work to throw us to them if we’re right next door.” The shopkeeper nodded to her left, at the forest beyond her door. “Everyone knows someone taken. Been a bit better for a while. Guess they had to start looking farther north for people to snatch.”
“There have been…more like me coming through this way?”
“A few. Many more that never made it this far.” The shopkeeper set her knobby elbows on the countertop and leaned in to growl at Sorcha, “You better run fast, dearie, if you want to outrunthem.”
Swallowing on a dry throat, Sorcha nodded. “I intend to.”
“Hm.” The woman nodded in approval. “Good. Just watch out for the strange one.”
“Strange one?”
“Lurks around these parts sometimes. Never approaches anyone and seems kind of small for one of them, but still two heads taller than even you. Keep an eye out for him.”
Orek.
Not wanting to betray her realization, Sorcha nodded and finished packing up her supplies.
Blood rushed in her ears, and Sorcha felt an overwhelming panic growing in her chest, expanding as if it could fill all the spaces inside and between her ribs. She shouldered the straps of the pack and lifted it onto her back, barely grunting under the weight. When she held out her hand for the map, the shopkeeper put it, folded, into her palm.
“Well, off with you then, orc-slut.”
“Thank you for your kindness, hag.”
The shopkeeper’s lips twitched in a grin, and Sorcha returned it half-heartedly.
