Page 7 of The Outcast Orc (Claimed by the Red Hand #1)

7

MAROK

The humans were practically asleep before they hit the bedrolls. How they could sleep on those musty, straw-filled bags of dust was beyond me. No wonder they had no sense of smell if that’s how they insisted on spending their nights. I’d cleared spots for Borkul and me where I could keep watch on them. They might not be strong, but if the large one had aimed for my eye instead of my neck, things would’ve gone much worse.

And I doubted he’d make the same mistake twice.

The smart thing would be to sell him off at the bazaar before he caught me by surprise and drove a stick into my brain. I would have already sold him by now, if not for his expertise. Finding a horseman in the slave tents had been an incredible stroke of luck—but like every unexpected boon, it came with a price. Hopefully the cost of this one wouldn’t be my eye.

It wasn’t long before Borkul ambled back with a goblin under each arm—a male and a female. Goblins don’t fall prey to the maladies that plague the weaker races, so their scents were strong and clean, though I could’ve done without the sandflower essence they’d both liberally applied to their armpits and groins.

“Take your pick,” Borkul said—completely ignoring what I’d said about not wanting a goblin.

I had nothing against them—I just wasn’t in the mood. I waved him off. “Go have fun. I’ll keep watch.”

The female goblin batted her long lashes at me. “Come on, big boy, I just filed down my teeth this morning. Y’gonna let all that effort go to waste?”

I threw another log on the fire without reply, and settled in to watch it burn.

Goblins are predators, nearly as big as humans, and their teeth are notoriously brutal. Claws, too—though they say it doesn’t hurt nearly as much to blunt them as it does to dull their teeth. Among their own kind, they wouldn’t dream of closing their mouth around someone’s dick. Not unless they were proving a point on the genitals of a vanquished enemy. Just goes to show what sorts of concessions you have to make when you live in mixed company.

The male goblin was less interested in seduction, likely eager to get on with things so he could head back to the bazaar and turn another trick. His black hair was slicked back in an elaborate knot and multiple hoops glinted from his pointed ears. Probably brass, not gold. But even so, brass wasn’t free.

In daylight, the goblins’ skin would be the dun clay color of their native soil and not the handsome dappled green of an orc, though in the firelight, they looked more like us than the soft, pale humans did. They were sturdy and sinewy, with the broad foreheads, huge eyes, and pointed chins common to all their kind.

Borkul tried again to get me to join in, but I just shook my head and continued to feed the fire—and eventually he gave up and led the goblins off into the brush. Close enough for me to keep sentry…but far enough for me to ignore the specifics.

Even if we found a stream to bathe in, Borkul would still have sandflower clinging to him by the time he got home. But so long as it wasn’t the scent of another orc, his wife had no reason to be annoyed, presuming he brought her a gift that was equal to what he’d spent on the whores.

The goblins were very vocal in their admiration of Borkul’s scent, muscles, and cock. It was all an act, but their delivery was enthusiastic enough. And when things really heated up, they seemed to enjoy it. It was possible their eagerness was sincere. Maybe mating with random travelers was easier work than breaking rocks inside whatever mountain they’d come from, ceaselessly digging so their greedy chieftains could expand their clan’s territory.

When the transaction was done and the goblins were pulling up their breeches, I shifted my position to keep an eye on the wagon. They might have admired Borkul’s cock…but that didn’t mean they were above pilfering anything within reach. Goblins are notorious for snagging anything of value on the pointed hooks of their claws. Even clipped blunt, as these two kept theirs, their fingers would still be light.

The female finished dressing first, knotting the ties on her beaded shawl with a lazy nonchalance as she sauntered toward the fire, looking me over. “Well, Mr. Watchkeeper…now that you’ve had some time to think on it, have you changed your mind about that blowjob?” She was persistent, I’d give her that. And I liked the impish glint in her eye. “Or are you worried you’ll pick up the scent of your clanmate’s jizz from me, so your wife suspects you’re bonking each other?”

Akala…. Any interest that might have been stirring immediately drained away. The space was filled by a pang of loss—followed by the inevitable flood of guilt.

The goblin wench didn’t notice my expression. But it was dark. And they’re not nearly as cunning as they think they are.

The male came to join her, walking gingerly, and paused beside the fire to scrutinize our three exhausted humans. “How much for the female?”

“She’s not for sale,” I said.

“Are you sure?” He cocked his head in that peculiar goblin way. With bulging eyes set so wide in their faces, it’s a wonder they can’t see behind themselves. “Everything’s got a price.”

Borkul joined us in nothing but his breeches with the scent of sandflower and goblin wafting off his skin. “Of course it does. Uh…what were we talking about?”

“That human there, on the end,” the male goblin repeated. “How much?”

Before Borkul could answer, I repeated more firmly, “She is not for sale.”

The female goblin fluttered her eyelashes. “Come now, Mr. Watchkeeper…we can offer double what you paid. Surely you could see the advantage of telling your chieftain she slipped off into the night—then pocket the extra coin for yourselves.”

“You don’t know what we paid,” Borkul said, bantering, light.

The male goblin cocked his head the other way. “Ah, but we can guess. We haven’t been to the edge of the human settlements ourselves, but we’ve rutted with enough traders who’ve passed through. How about this—double the coin, and I’ll throw in a sack of fried cave crickets bigger than your head. They’re in season, you know. Extra spicy.”

Borkul cut his eyes to me. He was tempted—not by the cave crickets, but the coin. It was easy money, and the chieftain was only expecting us to return with two humans anyway. But I couldn’t buy my way back into his favor. I had to be the one to end the Two Swords Clan’s incursions for good.

I shook my head once, and Borkul shrugged. He ushered the goblins toward the edge of our camp with an easy laugh. “Sorry, my short friends—finders keepers. Though I will be sure to check out those cave crickets before we set off in the morning.”

Once the goblins were gone, Borkul joined me to crouch beside the fire. “They seemed pretty keen on the female,” he observed. I grunted. “Come to think of it, I didn’t notice any human whores by the red lantern.”

“So, there’s your answer. You know how squeamish humans can be about mating with other races. I’m sure human wenches and bedboys are always in demand.”

Borkul scratched an armpit. “And yet, they didn’t make an offer for the boy.”

“Then they must have plenty of males. Not our problem. If it’s human wenches they want, they can go to the slavers themselves. Your watch starts in two hours. Go to sleep.”

Since I’d already cleared the ground by the fire and swept it smooth with the branches of a fallen spruce, Borkul didn’t need to do anything but lie down and close his eyes. Though he did pause to glance over at our humans and say, “How they manage to sleep on those mushy, lumpy bedrolls, I’ll never know.”

Soon enough, Borkul rolled onto his belly and started to snore. The distant sounds from the bazaar carried on the night wind. Different races had different ideas of what time was best for sleeping—day or night—so the noise there never really shut down. It just changed in tenor depending on who was awake.

I could find work easily enough in a settlement like that. Merchants were always eager to hire orcish security. What would it be like to live among so many other different races? I suspected that, oddly enough, there'd be a certain anonymity there, even if I was the sole orc in a mass of goblins and mongrels and ogres and whatever else called these streets home. I doubted anyone would stop me from leaving the Red Hand. It was tempting to stay in a place where I didn’t need to carry my past on my shoulders.

But fleeing your past is no way to atone for your mistakes.

Lost in thought, I let Borkul sleep an extra hour, then woke him once my eyelids grew heavy. We had too many miles yet to travel, and I needed rest. With one last look at the humans huddled together on their uncomfortable bedrolls, I settled in by the fire to sleep—

—and was pulled from the depths of slumber by the sound of a human shriek.

Our fire hissed as a bucket of water doused it, but not before I spied the silhouette of a half-dozen thieves creeping through our camp—the goblin with the bronze earrings leading the way. Borkul! The thought of him slaughtered in his sleep, just like his sister, brought bile to the back of my throat.

My eyes hadn’t quite adjusted to the dark, but I calmed myself with a strong whiff. No scent of blood.

Not yet.

Goblins are tunnelers, and by starlight alone, they can see everything clear as day. They’d doused the fire to give themselves an advantage, since my vision would take a moment to catch up. I groped for the short club I always kept at my side, but it was nowhere. My sword lay with my gear—too long for this tight space—and the club was likely in the hands of the marauding goblins already. My eating knife wouldn’t do much good, but I pulled it anyhow. Since I had no desire to be brained by my own weapon, I cast around in the dark for something substantial to defend myself with, but I’d cleared the ground around me for sleeping too well, and there was nothing.

And then Borkul pressed his back to mine in a fighting stance and asked, “How many?”

You’d know damn well if you’d been awake was the obvious answer, but I was too relieved he was still alive to say so. “Five, maybe six.”

“They’ve got my sword,” he said, and came up with a splintered plank to defend himself with.

Our humans were awake now. The younger male cried out, “What the—? What are they?” Two goblins were already on them, one prying out the tent peg while another tried to wedge open our female’s collar.

The tent peg was the first to give, and soon, the end of the chain swung free—but if the goblins thought to drag off our slaves…the humans had other ideas.

The human horseman yanked the chain from the goblin’s startled grasp, swinging it in an easy, defensive circle. His stance was firm—he stood like a fighter, not a slave. In the moonlight, his skin didn’t look nearly as soft and vulnerable as it had by firelight. I’d been leery of this one when he came at me with a makeshift knife. But I was glad enough for him now, since he was willing to defend the female. Without a decent weapon at hand and so many goblins skulking through our camp, I welcomed the alliance…even if I could only trust him to protect his own kind.

Borkul nudged a signal with his shoulder. We started rounding the firepit in a well-choreographed move, minimizing every vulnerability. A couple of goblins scrambled to cut us off from our humans—Bronze Earring in the lead with an ugly, serrated blade in his hand.

“Come on, now,” Borkul said to him. “Is that any way to be? I thought we were pals.”

“You should have just sold the wench when you had the chance,” the goblin hissed, and swiped at Borkul’s knees with the blade. Goblins have a surprisingly long reach, and that blade was just the thing to saw through a tendon. But Borkul sidestepped and gave him a solid whack in the shoulder with his plank.

“Walk away,” Borkul said, all playfulness now gone from his voice. “No one needs to die tonight.”

Earring wasn’t impressed. “You might be big, but you’re outnumbered. Give us the female and I’ll go easy on you…for old time’s sake.”

No doubt he would just as soon run Borkul through with his jagged blade.

There were too many goblins in our way for us to get to the humans, but at least now I spied a weapon. A thick branch protruding from the smoldering remains of the campfire was within reach. I made a grab for it. The branch came free with a rain of red cinders, and the doused fire sprang to life again once the air hit the sleeping embers.

Smoke, sparks, flame. The campsite was in chaos. I ignored the charred wood scorching my palm and lashed out at a scurrying shadow. But goblins are quick—especially when they’re trying to save their own skins—and the small fighter dodged and parried. I shoved toward him with the hook of my eating knife, but he danced out of reach.

I swung wild with the branch and finally made contact, hitting the goblin with a shower of sparks —

—just as the rest of the goblins made a break for the humans.