The three humans spun around, their faces—a moment ago so full of smug cruelty—contorting into masks of pure, abject terror. They had been so focused on their small, wounded prey they had not sensed the apex predator stalking up behind them.
I did not give them time to think, to regroup, to beg. The one closest to me was my first target. He tried to bring his sword up, a pathetic, panicked gesture. I was already on him. My axe was a blur of dark iron. It took him high in the chest, the heavy blade shearing through leather, ribcage, and spine with a sound like a great tree splitting in a storm. I tore the axe free in a spray of gore and turned on the second.
He was smarter. He screamed and threw his sword at me, a desperate, useless act, and tried to run. I let myaxe go, spinning it end over end. It caught him between the shoulder blades, burying itself to the haft in his back. He fell without another sound.
The third, the one she had already wounded, was scrabbling backward on the ground, his eyes wide with horror, crab-walking away from the carnage. I stalked toward him, my bare hands clenched into fists that ached to crush and break. He whimpered, a high, thin sound.
“Please… mercy…”
I looked from his pathetic, terrified face to Kael. She was still leaning against the rock, her leg now trembling violently, but her eyes—her beautiful, stormy eyes—were fixed on me, wide with a mixture of shock, pain, and something I couldn't decipher.
I had no mercy left for the creature that had made her bleed. My boot slammed down on his sword hand, shattering the bones with a wet crunch. He shrieked. I reached down, grabbed him by the throat, and lifted him from the ground. His feet kicked uselessly in the air.
“You… hurt… her,” I snarled, the words in the common tongue a guttural, broken thing, forced from a throat raw with rage.
I squeezed. There was a sharp crack of bone, and then he went limp, a dead weight in my grasp. I tossed the corpse aside like a piece of refuse.
The red haze of my rage receded, the fire banked by the sudden, chilling silence. It was replaced by a cold, sharp terror that was a thousand times worse.
Kael.
I turned to her. She was sliding down the face of the rock, her wounded leg giving way, a fresh wave of blood staining the ground beneath her.
“Kael!” Her name was a raw sound, torn from my lungs.
I was at her side in two great strides, my boots skidding in the slick, poisoned mud. I went to my knees before her, my hands hovering, terrified to touch her, terrified not to. Her face was ashen, her breathing shallow and fast.
“The water…” she rasped, her eyes fluttering. “Poison… they…”
“Hush,” I commanded, my voice rough with a frantic tenderness I did not know I possessed. “Do not speak.”
My gaze fell on the gash in her thigh. It was deep, bleeding freely. Too much blood. She was losing too much blood. My own blood ran cold.
I ripped a length of cloth from the tunic of a dead man and pressed it hard against the wound. She cried out, a sharp, choked sound of pain that felt like a dagger twisting in my own gut.
“I have you,” I murmured, the words a raw, desperate prayer. “I have you.”
There was no time. The Healer. I needed to get her to Zogga.
I gathered her into my arms, my movements as gentle as I could manage with a body built for war. She was impossibly light, a fragile bird in my grasp. She whimpered as I lifted her, her head falling against my shoulder. Her blood soaked into my tunic, a warm, wet stain over my heart.
The journey back to the stronghold was a blur of focused terror. I ran. I did not feel the branches that whipped at my face or the stones that turned under my boots. My entire world had narrowed to the precious, wounded weight in my arms and the desperate need to keep her breathing.
I burst through the gates of the stronghold like a storm, roaring for the Healer. Orcs scattered before me, their faces shocked as they saw their General, covered in fresh blood, carrying the limp form of the human female.
I did not stop until I was inside Zogga’s lodge. It was a longhouse filled with the smells of drying herbs, moss, and clean smoke. Zogga, the clan’s Healer, was an old, stoic female with hands as gnarled as ancient roots. She took one look at Kael and her expression hardened.
“On the furs. Now,” she commanded, and I obeyed instantly, laying Kael down on a clean bed of furs with a reverence I would not have shown a king.
Just as Zogga began to cut away the blood-soaked leather of Kael’s breeches, my brother, Kazgar, entered, his face a grim mask.
“What has happened, brother?” he demanded.
Before I could answer, Kael stirred. Her eyes fluttered open, hazy with pain but sharp with purpose. She looked at Kazgar. “The springhead,” she whispered, her voice a thread. “They poisoned it. The humans… a kill squad…”
Kazgar’s face went rigid. He looked at me, his eyes wide with horror and understanding. He didn’t need any more explanation. He spun on his heel and bellowed an order to the guard at the door.“Sound the alarm! No one is to drink from the river! No one! Secure the springhead! Now!”
The alarm horn began to blow, its urgent, deep notes echoing through the valley. The clan, which moments before had been peaceful, was now a flurry of disciplined action. Kael had saved them. This small, wounded human had saved my people from a cowardly, agonizing death. The debt was incalculable.
