Page 5 of Halfling
He took a hurried step forward, heart lurching painfully against his ribs, but then those eyes moved to his. No, not his mother. Different face. And young, too young.
But human.
Talon had brought Krul a young human woman.
Fuck!
Sorcha gnawed at the gag in her mouth, hating how much she felt like a horse with a bit.
A dark laugh gurgled in her throat. She might as well be horseflesh, bought and paid for by males who intended to use her for gods knew what.
It’d been days since she’d had her bearings, spending most of the damn journey with a sack over her head, and now that she could see something, all she had to go on was the inside of a damn tent—just a bigger sack with barely any more detail. She worked the gag around in her mouth, swallowing the spit pooling beneath her tongue, and tried to discern what she could.
She’d been on a quiet bend in the road on her way to see her friend Aislinn—a shady place where the rocky outcrop lining the road was coolest. In winter, horses had to pick their way carefully around dark sheets of ice that never melted in that sunless stretch. She’d never considered anyone would be brazen enough to lie in wait along the rock wall.
One had hit her from above, dragging her off her horse, and the sudden, violent smack of the ground had stunned her. Hands, more than two, had snatched and pulled at her. She’d kicked and bit while her horse Fiora screamed and pounded the earth, but there were too many. She’d elbowed soft parts and clawed faces but still the dark-cloaked men had overpowered her, bound her, and then put that hated sack over her head before hitting her skull harder than the ground had.
Stupid. She’d never have let her younger sisters ride that road alone but had thought nothing of doing it herself. She’d made that ride to the stronghold of Dundúran hundreds of times without problem.
Of course, that had been before she refused Lord Darrow’s son and heir.
She hadn’t meant to laugh in Jerrod’s face, honestly. But the idea of her laying with him, her best friend Aislinn’s younger brother, had been laughable. He was a man now, yes, not the gangly boy she’d once known. Yet the man he’d become—boastful, prideful, and hotheaded—never inspired affection nor even liking.
She’d been taken almost a fortnight ago, she estimated, a mere week after refusing Jerrod’s advances. For days, she’d come to learn the small sounds her captors made, the different feeling of their grips, even the different tangs of their smells. They took the sack off at night sometimes but never let her see their faces. Still, she knew there were four of them, all men, three younger and one older. One of the younger ones had a slight limp and another smoked a sweet-smelling tobacco. They rarely spoke around her, never more than orders, one of which had stayed with her the whole journey,“No touching. They pay better if they’re still pretty.”
So she hadn’t been accosted aside from being hauled around and carried like a sack over the back of a horse or thrown down to the ground when it was time to rest.
Yesterday, they’d stopped for longer than usual, almost a whole day she guessed. Waiting. It’d created a sucking pit of dread deep in her gut.
She’d known the newcomers from their odd, long gait. Something that took that long a stride should’ve had heavy steps, but they were almost upon her captors before anyone heard them. She’d been kept away from whatever transaction happened and couldn’t understand what was said, but she’d gone to markets enough to know haggling when she heard it.
And then new hands had grabbed her, holding her against skin that didn’t smell or feel quite…right. They didn’t talk much during the long walk here, just a few grunts that had fear skittering up her spine.
Orcs. Those bastards had sold her to orcs!
She’d had to stop the nausea from spewing out her gagged mouth; it helped that her stomach had been folded over an unforgiving shoulder for hours. Other than her revolting stomach, she’d gone numb as they hiked, the sounds of the orcs grunting to one another barely making it past her ears.
Now she was in a tent, surrounded by crates and jugs.Other commodities, she thought, disgusted.
Flesh trading was not only banned but reviled throughout the kingdom of Eirea. It carried a death sentence for anyone found guilty, so who would be stupid enough to do something like this? And sell her toorcs?The brutal mountain-dwellers were as reviled as flesh peddling.
Her gut twisted with an idea, the memory of Jerrod and her rejection bouncing through her mind, but she didn’t know if she could believe it.He wouldn’t dare.
She growled in frustration as her skin chafed against the ropes. None of that mattered right now—first she had to get free then figure out how far from home they’d taken her. For the first time in days, she was alone, and she didn’t plan on staying long enough to get her first good look at an orc. The stories of what they did to humans, especially women, were enough.
Urgency clawed at her throat, making her pulse audible as she twisted the bonds around her wrists. It was a thick, tight knot, and in the murky darkness, she worried she only made it worse.
A little whimper of frustration escaped her, and Sorcha paused to take a breath. Crying hadn’t solved her problems and it wouldn’t start now. She’d done enough of it late into the nights when she thought her captors were asleep—“Get it all out, then get on with it,”her mother liked to say.
She quashed the errant thought of her mother ruthlessly—if she thought of how sick with worry her mother must be, how her brothers Connor and Niall would think it their fault, how her youngest sisters would weep and watch the horizon for her, how her father would search into the night and not sleep until she was found…
If she thought any of those things, she’d break. So she didn’t let herself think them, just how she would make it back to her family.
Sorcha was about to start again at a different angle when theslapof the tent door smacked her ears. A surprised whoosh of air puffed around the gag before she held her breath and sat silently, eyes wide.
Something moved around the tent to her right, where she thought the front was. Quiet feet maneuvered around boxes and barrels, and then a shadow, darker than all the others, came around the nearest pile of goods.
The tallest, biggest man Sorcha had ever seen loomed over her, his eyes wide in surprise.
