Page 2 of The Outcast Orc (Claimed by the Red Hand #1)

2

QUINN

Two weeks later….

The slave trader burst into the tent with a flourish of his tattered silk robes. “Look lively, crew. A buyer caravan is on its way—and their coffers are busting with gold!”

As if his guards needed any more reason to poke at us. At least a dozen unfortunates—including me—had been dragged through the territories and dumped off in the middle of the Wasteland with nothing to do but sit in our cages and dread whatever fate had in store for us next. Meanwhile, the guards had nothing to do but antagonize us. I couldn’t say what was worse—being sold, or not being sold. Rumor had it that anyone left after the day’s trading could be had for a pittance…little enough that the guards could pool their money and take the unsold goods off their employer’s hands.

And that once they were through with the unlucky slave, there’d be one less mouth left to feed.

Generally, it was just the women who had to worry about the guards buying them. But there are exceptions to every rule.

A thick brute of a guard with a face like a diseased bull testicle paused to peer between the bars of my cage with a lingering look. I’d made fast enemies with him my first day here by shouting at him to stop his horse-whipping.

No one likes being told they're wrong—least of all by someone in chains.

But I couldn’t stop myself.

The guard leaned toward the bars, just out of reach, and pitched his voice low and mean. “Caravan’s coming. You think them’s people on it? Hah. Guess again. Way out here in the Wasteland, you never know what kind of beast will show up.”

I ignored him.

“Ya hear me, you stuck-up git? I said, they ain’t people.”

I wasn’t about to rise to his bait, but the sheepish woman in the cage beside me let her curiosity get the best of her. “What do you mean, they’re not people?”

Bollocks smiled. A grim, ugly thing. And though he answered her, he kept his flinty little eyes on me. “Oh, they walk on two legs just like you and me, and they got coin to spend…but no sir, they ain’t people.”

There was hardly enough room in my cage to turn around, so I lounged against the back and looked up at the top as if the bars were the most fascinating thing in the world.

My fellow prisoner didn’t follow my lead. “What are they?” she asked, horrified.

Bollocks wet his lips eagerly and lowered his voice. “I’ll bet you that caravan’s full of orcs.”

“There’s no such thing,” the woman snapped—though the tone in her voice conveyed she wasn’t entirely convinced.

“That’s what I used to think,” Bollocks claimed. “That’s what anyone living inside the safe walls of the Fortifications think. But way out here, past the borders? Beyond the Wasteland where the water tastes like piss and the sun sets red? You’d best believe that all them monsters dear Mommy warned you about ain’t just bogeymen she made up to keep you in line.”

Orcs were no more real than gold-shitting unicorns. Obviously, this creep was just having his fun. I didn’t deign to respond. Of course I didn’t.

But I must have let some small, disdainful noise escape me.

The guard pressed himself against my cage, dagger out, daring me to make a lunge for him. “You think one of them beast’s gonna care about your snooty ways?” he growled. “The only use they got for horses is as pack animals—and you hardly need some fancy trainer to teach their mules to dance. Unless one takes you for a bedboy.” His eyes went nasty. “Pound the attitude outta you with a prick the size of my arm.”

The threat of being bought by orcs was ludicrous. Though, frankly, I had no idea why he’d even bothered embellishing the tale. Being sold off to a group of bloodthirsty marauders like the one who’d brought us there would be bad enough—though hopefully they’d find a highly trained horseman less disposable than some poor wench.

I slid a silent apology to the woman in the cage beside me even as I thought it…and did my best not to let my worries show on my face. Animals can read fear in even the smallest of our gestures. But humans will always fall for a confident front.

Unfortunately, not all of them appreciate it. Especially not the ones who get off on others cowering before them. Bollocks rattled my cage hard enough that even I flinched, and said, “Maybe when they’re done with ya, I’ll scoop you up myself.”

I thought the guard was turning to walk away, smug in the notion that he’d planted his hateful little threat, and so it took me entirely by surprise when, instead, he reared back and hawked.

The gob of spit landed beneath my eye, hot and vile. For a heartbeat, I couldn't move—couldn't breathe. If he'd dared such a thing within the walls of the Fortifications, I would’ve whipped him myself.

But my whip was long gone. I was in a cage. And the Fortifications were leagues away.

As Bollocks strode off, chuckling to himself, something nudged me in the arm. “Here.” The woman in the next cage—the one who believed in orcs—was pressing a scrap of cloth between the bars. “I’m Bess.”

“Quinn.” The sound of my own name felt clumsy in my mouth. I hadn’t spoken it since the slavers scooped me up at the edge of the Wasteland a fortnight ago. “My name is Quinn.”

Bess nudged me again with her handkerchief, but I waved it away, unwilling to take her only earthly possession. I wiped away the spit with the back of my sleeve instead.

Bess was barely out of her teens, though a hard life had worn a leery crease between her eyebrows. Her brown hair was clipped short, as if she’d recently sold it off to a wigmaker. “Is that right, what he said?” she asked—and I expected her to wonder if orcs were real. “You train horses?”

I hardly felt like much of a horseman on this side of the bars. I gave a vague gesture in reply.

“You can't act like you're still in the Fortifications,” she said. “Out here in the Wasteland—sometimes it’s best not to brag.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “Did I brag? How’d I manage that without speaking so much as a word?”

“I’m just trying to help you,” she whispered as another guard passed within earshot. Once he was gone, she added, “Folks can brag plenty without saying a thing. The way you stand there with your chin up. The way you were holding his stare. People like you—the guards like to knock you down a peg. Like when slavers brought me here, just a few days before you, there was a handmaid from a real fancy house. She always got it way worse than the rest of us…if you know what I mean.”

I hitched my eyebrow higher.

“Just trying to help,” she repeated.

“Why bother?” a younger guy called out from a few cages down. His voice was raspy and dry. “We’re all as good as dead.”