Page 54 of Bred

MASTERED BY THE ORC

L.V. LANE

CHAPTER ONE

PIPA

Greenbastards,Blightenscum,and orcs. The orc hordes have many names, and every one of them fills me with dread.

After many weeks on a ship crossing the Lumen Sea, I’m glad to see land. It is what comes after that I worry for as I take a rare moment above deck. My old clothes have turned to rags during the voyage, and the biting wind finds every gap.

If I shiver, it is not only from the cold.

In the distance, a great city rises from the horizon, all black and gray, twisting towers, and dull flapping flags. Bleakness was once a thriving seaport named Port Ardin, or so one of my fellow prisoners told me. Then the Blighten came through, and those who didn’t flee were killed or enslaved. Years passed, and human slaves who showed loyalty to the Blighten cause were gifted power and position. Now they run the slave markets, snatching likely candies from the streets of cities and towns around the empires and beyond and ferrying them by land or sea to Bleakness, where they will be sold.

I am one such soul, stolen from the Imperium capital, where I worked for a baker. An orphan after my mama died last year, I have no family that might miss me. The bakery where I found employment, offering food and simple lodging in exchange for my service, would have replaced me by now.

In big cities, folks disappear all the time. No one minds it unless the person is important. As I share the deck with a handful of other slaves, I see others just like me.

“Git back inside,” the human overseer calls, tapping the battered club he carries against his palm lest any of us consider mischief. No one does, and we hasten below deck, eyes lowered to the wooden planks.

As we take the narrow stairs down into our section of the hold, I seehim,the young orc with dark, endless eyes.There are only a few orcs on the ship, all big towering males with green or gray skin, tufted ears, and tusks. They are unquestionablybrutish. I’d never seen an orc before they brought me to this ship, only imagined them from tales I’d heard over the years.

I snatch my gaze away. Murl is his name. At least that is the word the others call him. For all I know, it could be an insult. His leather jerkin and pants are always clean, and his ax is neatly stowed at his waist, the blade covered in a leather sleeve.He is not quite as brutish as the other two, but if I think I see a softening in his gaze when it rests upon me, I know I am mistaken. They are cruel creatures who pray to the war gods of old.

Mama always said they had no soul.

I can well believe her.

The great hatch closes, casting us into gloom, and the sea turns choppy as the wind rises. We roll one way and then the other until the clank of a great chain releasing tells me we have arrived at Bleakness.

I look around the room, seeing the desolation I feel reflected in slumped shoulders and broken expressions.

A great creak above, and the hatch opens. “Up ye come, lest ye want a taste o’ me persuader,” the overseer calls. “Not too late to toss a trickster over the side.”

We rise, chains clanking as we line up and climb the wooden stairs for the last time.

The wharf is noisy and crowded with humans and orcs. Carts create a drum against the wooden walkways as they trundle past, mixing with calls and banter between sailors and dockworkers and the caw of seagulls overhead. The smell of salt is familiar, but there are also the scents of fish, spices, smoke, and animals, for chickens and pigs are lined up in crates along the wharf where we unload.

I don’t see much more than a glimpse. We are hastened straight from the ship across the wharf into a great stone building and taken ever downward along winding stone passages with high ceilings under the flickering light of burning sconces.

My mind sinks, disconnecting from my reality, and I become barely cognizant of my surroundings as I fall into despair with every step. At the bottom, we come to a junction with passages leading three ways. Here, we are separated. I’m the only young woman, and I’m taken one way, while the few mature women are led a different way and the men yet another.

I don’t like the separation. I don’t know the people well, although we have shared a few words and tales of our circumstances, but they are my last connection to my old life and who I was.

This moment feels significant, more significant even than the day they snatched me from the streets, kicking and screaming but easily subdued, my cry lost as a giant hand clamped over my mouth.

I know running is foolish, but I do, arms and legs pumping furiously. I feel like I fly down the corridor, turning left and right at random, the cries and pounding footfall of the overseer chasing me.

Then I run into a wall. No, not a wall, for there is leather over the stony hardness.

The hardness moves, manifesting two great arms and meaty fists that seek to contain me—orchands. I have run into an orc. A scent wafts over me, one I’ve caught only a tendril of before.Murl.

The orc I crashed into represents a safer place than the roaring overseer, who’s closing in, and I climb up his body like a monkey. Murl grunts, closing his arms around me. I tremble uncontrollably, sure I’m about to be beaten or killed for my flight.

Why did I run? I sob, no longer trying to escape the orc’s hold but pitilessly begging for mercy.

“Hand the bitch over, an’ we’ll see as she’s punished.”