I think of my shipmates, my brothers, and wonder if they are searching for me. Or are they dead? Maybe some others have washed ashore, too. I can find them. We can join together.
Gruk. Mogor. The names are a prayer and a curse.
The thought of my lost clan fills me with a cold, hollow rage. I am alone on an enemy continent.
I am a stone. I am a tool. I am nothing.
The cold... the cold of the ocean... it is fading.
…
The void is replaced by a different sensation. A warmth.
A smell. Not salt. Not smoke. Hay?
And something else. Fialon berries.
The darkness recedes. A small, cool hand is on my face.
Aurora.
14
AURORA
Iwake to a single, dull ache. My body is stiff, my neck is cramped, and I am still buried in the hay. The first thing I realize is that I am not cold. A solid, steady warmth is pressed against my back, a living wall that has kept the damp, nighttime chill from my bones.
The air smells of dry, dusty hay, of old,- time-worn wood, and... ofhim. A musky, clean, iron-like scent that has woven itself into my clothes, into my hair, into my very skin. It is the scent of the man I dragged here.
I hear the whistle of the wind through the rotted slats of the barn, but beneath it, I hear a new sound. A deep, steady,rumbling. It is not the shallow, wet rasp of a dying man. It’s the sound of breathing.
He’s cool.
The thought is a jolt of lightning. I scramble up, my heart hammering, and turn in the dim light. I press my palm to his forehead. The raging, unnatural furnace is gone. His skin is not cold, but it is not the burning heat of the numiscu fever. It is just… warm. A deep, powerful, living warmth.
He is breathing.
It worked. Oh gods, it worked.
I look at my own hands, at the dirt caked under my nails. I touch my lips, which feel bruised and raw from chewing the bitter, fibrous meqixste root. I can still taste the acrid, earthy awfulness of it. I look at the mangled, discarded remnants of the root in the hay beside him.
I saved him. I, who have never saved anyone, I saved this seven-foot orc.
His eyes snap open.
I freeze. They are not the glazed, amber-yellow of his fever. They are not the dead, flat eyes of the monster in Privis's hall. They are clear. They are sharp, intensely focused, and locked onme.
He knows.
His gaze travels from my face, to my bruised lips, then to the chewed root in the hay. He sees it all. His eyes move over my small, filthy form, huddled in his shadow. He does not speak. He justlooks, and that look—a raw, stunned, agonizing reverence—strips the air from my lungs.
He moves, his one good arm shifting. He is weak. I can see the strain in the corded muscles of his shoulder, the tremor of effort, but he is alive. His massive, calloused hand lifts, and I flinch, my body tensing for... I do not know what.
But he does not grab. He does not command. His fingers, scarred and rough as stone, brush the hay from my cheek. His touch is so gentle, so hesitant, it makes my eyes burn.
"You..." His voice drops to a low, rough rumble, raw from the fever. "You saved me."
I cannot speak. I just nod, my throat tight, my heart aching.
