He squeezed her hands tighter and waited until the last echo of her shriek had faded. “Royla.” He spoke her name softly.
She opened her eyes to look at him, a tear rolling down her cheek.
“Royla,” he repeated. “I...loveyou more deeply than I’ve ever loved anything. I would do anything for you. Anything for our child. But a child is nothing without a village to raise it. You must understand that. Whatever happens, I know you will be cared for. Because they will know that what grows in your belly is Dranark in some way. Whether I’m there or not is... secondary.”
Her whole body ached as more tears rolled down her face. The pain, the unbearable heaviness of what he was saying seemed like it would be too much to bear. She shook her head, trying to make it all go away. “No, Thanred,” she said, her voice tight. “I can’t. We can just stay here. We can find a way. Maybe later things will change? Maybe Dodlin... maybe something will happen to him. Maybe...”
He stilled her with a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve made my decision. I’m sorry this pains you. That was not myintention. I am Dranark. We don’t let life happen at us. When things are hard, we mustact.”
His solemn tone sent a shiver racing down her back. As much as she wanted him to change his mind, to tell her they could walk back into the forest and live in peace and loneliness, there was an honor to what he’d said that moved her deeply. She looked deep into his dark eyes. “I will always be proud to know you are father to my child,” she whispered.
Thanred’s jaw clenched and he swallowed, as if fighting against his own emotions. After a deep breath, he rose and offered a hand to help her stand up.
Royla took it and stood up from the log she’d been sitting on. Though the dread of knowing what they had to face still gripped her, the fog had begun to clear from her mind. Thanred was right. This was the honorable thing to do. Not to hide and hope they were never found but to fight. To try to carve out a life for themselves and their child.
“Come. We are almost at the caves,” he said softly, placing a hand on her back.
Royla nodded and began to walk next to him toward the setting sun and whatever destiny the future held.
She no longer felt the soreness in her feet. Nor did she care that she was cold. She fixed her mind on one thought: that she was here now with Thanred. She closed her eyes and tried to capture the intensity of that feeling so that she would never forget it.
The sun had just touched the earth on the horizon when they heard the voices.
At first Royla panicked. She gripped Thanred’s arm and cowered behind him, her teeth chattering from fear as much as from the cold.
When he raised a hand to quiet her, she held her breath and listened intently to the sounds drifting through the woods.
They were strange, guttural grunts. For a moment they sounded like animals. But as she listened more closely it wasclear that there was an order to them. A language she didn’t understand.
“Mother Mountain,” Thanred whispered.
“What is it?” Royla hissed behind him, clutching his arm.
“Stay here,” he ordered. “Stay low. Behind that bush. I will be back.”
“Don’t leave me!” she pleaded, gripping his arm even harder, not wanting to be left alone.
Thanred turned to look at her with a stern gaze. “Royla, I promise you I will return. Those voices... they sound like Dranark.”
Her eyes went wide. “Who are they? Are they your... do you know them?” she whispered.
“I think so. But I want to make sure it is safe. I promise you I won’t go forward if it’s not. You have to let go.”
Shivering, she pried her fingers off his arm. Crouching low, she ducked behind the bush he’d pointed out. She curled into a ball, holding her knees to her chest as she watched him disappear into the woods beyond.
As the light waned, darkness surrounded her. She tried to count, to have some idea of how much time had passed, but soon lost track. She sat barely breathing, trying to listen for any sounds that might betray what was happening to Thanred. The only thing she could hear were the sounds of the forest, the voices having disappeared into the noise.
A twig cracking made her gasp and look up through the bush. Thanred was standing beyond. He crouched low and reached out to beckon her toward him. “Come, Royla. It is safe. They are friends.”
Royla crawled out from the thicket and stood up. Her eyes darted between Thanred and the direction from which the voices had come. Taking his hand, she walked next to him, peering through the trees.
Fifty paces farther, the figures came into view. There were half a dozen of them, all male she saw as shame burned her cheeks. She averted her eyes from the naked figures, their cocks hanging low between their legs the same wayThanred’s did.
“Kashegi,” Thanred said beside her.
His voice seemed strange as his tongue twisted around the foreign language.
“She does not speak Dranark,” he explained.
