It could have been awkward. Corrin thought with a man, someone like the pig farmer or her sister's husband, to have them just look at her like that, searching and seeking and wanting everything, would have been uncomfortable. She would have wanted to turn away.
She smiled at Urku-ri, the beautiful blue of his crystalline eyes meeting her brown ones. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her. Her hair, which he combed through with his claws, grooming her, unraveling every braid—he must like it, or else he would leave it alone. Her face, so unlike him, but exactly like her mother's with big sultry brown doe eyes that masked Corrin's bad temper, and clear skin her sisters called enviable.
They were very different. She looked nothing like an Orki. His shape, while human, was fully masculine. His face, customs, habits, completely foreign. He watched her while she watched him, wondering.
Waiting for his answer. What were these hungries?
"Many hungries, many of one mind, numberless of same. One Queen far away, but many-of-same will be in one place," he said finally.
She could tell he was pausing, looking for the right translation. Patting her thigh, he said, "Many as honey-makers.
Hungries no make, only hungry. Only eat and breed."
"Honey-makers? Bees?"
"Yes."
"Many of one mind? A hive? A swarm? You mean like a nest or something?"
"Yes. Frighten Corrin. Corrin mind self. Orki keep redress and succor woman safe. Urku-ri keep Corrin safe. Stay on Searnon. Stay near flame." He slid both his axes from their sheaths. She remembered, suddenly, that he'd only needed one to take down a room of raiders.
What were these hungries?
They crossed the water without incident. On the other side of the waters, half of the Orki lit torches. The fire crackled in the dim gray of the morning. With plenty of sun through the trees, however, they didn't seem necessary. The Orki saw well enough in shadows, perfectly fine in the dark. Why torches in the daylight?
There were no giant trees on this side of the river, outside of the island, just the regular ones and a mix of the leafy kind she recognized from home. They traveled down what had either been an ancient road or riverbed. Wide enough for three war beasts, somewhat flat, with an incline and cleared of obstructing greenery, she could follow it ahead to where the forest thickened and became dense. They were climbing higher into the mountains.
Instead of mounting behind her, Urku-ri walked. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but he shook his head, a finger to his lips. Raising his right ax in signal, he broke into a run.
The party followed suit.
With his bulk, he should have been slow, ponderous. He was not. He moved as Searnon moved. A predator in his element.
Corrin watched him. The rippling muscles of his naked back. His arms, with veins wrapped like vines around them. She hadn't gotten enough of a chance to touch and taste him the way he had tasted her. It had all been one rapturous explosion after another; him dominating her, giving and taking. She desired him. Recognized the itch and impatience for what it was now: need and lust.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the wind catch the leaves of a tree and shake a hundred free. They danced down in a beautiful gliding fall, emerald green and dark, smoky blue, with all the shades between as they tumbled down to the ground. She watched with a smile, the sight magical, when suddenly a tree lurched to the right.
What?
Wood cracked like breaking bone. It was loud. Corrin looked around. More trees, shedding leaves, tilting in crazy directions. The Orki called out to each other, running over, around, and through the snow of falling leaves and breaking branches.
Magic gave way to chaos. Trees fell. A big silverwood crashed down right in front of them. Not missing a beat, Searnon and Urku-ri climbed over it. Things, green old men, fast, with grins that wrapped around their faces, and small, snorting piglike noses, were everywhere, climbing out of holes of tangled roots where the trees had once been.
Behind. In front. Off to the side. An ambush. Some dropped from the trees like overripe fruit, landing with clumsy tumbles. Terrifying nightmares, they were a diseased shade of speckled green and yellow, and between four and five feet tall. Looking like a cross between skeletal old men with round bellies and smudged out pig people—there were too many to count.
The party moved forward until the path was too clogged with the green things. Were these the hungries? They were everywhere, no space between them, they were even on each other's shoulders. Orki weapons sliced through piggy faces, and ten replaced the ones who had just been cleaved in two. Next to her, Corrin saw an Orki warrior with a spear lift three pinned green bodies skewered on the haft in the air and push the point into a fourth. The creatures filled up the roadway and the area around, surrounding the Orki as if they had no fear of strength and steel.
Clumsy, with eyes like tiny dark spots, the things rushed forward with noses in the air, sniffing and chittering. Day blind, but relentless. Only the fire slowed them. The flame made their skin sizzle and bubble when it came close. The hungries were terrified of it.
While they held no fear of death, seemed to not even notice pain, the hungries avoided the Orki holding torches high in the air. Corrin could see the hungry-things hated the flames, what the fire did, but only blade and axes were used to fight them.
Why? Why not use what they hated?
The rush of the things moved in a carpet of disgust. With a definite goal. Their noses were pointed in female directions.
His hand in the air, someone threw Urku-ri a torch, and he tossed back his extra ax. Staying close to Corrin's side while Searnon bit and clawed and chewed, a bucking war machine beneath her. The hungries died by the dozens against the Orki. Four jumped on Urku-ri's back, wide mouths opened in a monstrous bite, but their teeth didn't penetrate, and the slimy secretions on their bodies made it hard for them to stay on when he shook himself. Some carried stone knives. They beat at his legs and torso, similarly useless.
Arms, legs, bald heads, pig noses, wide mouths. A writhing swarm of them advanced. The twenty-six Orki were trapped in the middle of a beehive, or an anthill. With an advantage in the boiling wave of their numbers, they kept coming forward.
