“Why is she asking if you’ll fight for me?” I asked.
Khal’s eyebrows almost flew off his face. He recovered. “She is asking because someone needs to, if someone challenges whether you should be claimed as one of us.”
“They will.”
“Sephar will.”
“Did you lie to me?”
“I knew one of us would be challenged. I didn’t know which.”
“So you lied.”
“You’re not in a place to fight. You can barely stand.” He glanced over my head, at the mass of orcs. “And you will make no friends by burning one of them alive.”
He was right. He knew them better. He knew this better.
“You’re hurt.”
The side of his mouth curled up. “I’ve been hurt before.” He looked back at the elderly orc-matron. “Please, assent.”
I turned to her. Goddess, I was trembling. “Yes.” I nodded. “He’ll fight for me.” And though I spoke in the common tongue, the sound slithered out, with sorcery, and by the gasps it seemed she and all of them could understand.
She held out her hands. “Does anyone offer to challenge the marrying-in of Rowena, Sorceress, Khal’s intended?” She did not say wife.
Sephar stepped forwards. And at the same time, a clear, hard voice rang out. “I challenge.”
Drazha stepped into the circle.
THE CHALLENGE
Drazha strode forward, her staff in her hand, the pale light of the risen moon gleaming on her bare arms. The beads were gone, only the one necklace at her throat.
She raised the staff. “I challenge the sorceress’s entry.”
Khal was frozen next to me, unmoving. I saw Sephar melt back into the shadow of the crowd to lurk. People were murmuring, but I didn’t stretch the magic to comprehend. I only knew what Khal next to me was saying: “Mom. Don’t do this.”
She dropped the staff, let it fall. “What weapon do you choose, sorceress’s champion?”
Khal looked to the old woman who had been presiding. Her eyes were pitying. “Drazha has recused herself from judgment. She has the right of challenge. What weapon will you take?”
I searched for Vrathgar in the crowd, found him. He was there with Tyralk, and instead of the reassurance I had hoped for, he looked ashen. As Khal said “Only a staff—" next to me, I saw him grimace, mutter some curse.
“The sorceress’s defender has chosen the staff. What tool is chosen by the challenger, Drazha of the half blade?”
“Vrygolth,” was the word I heard, and as the whispers rippled through the crowd, the magic punched into my mind the image of a short spear with a blade on each end. In the burst of intensity before I had to pull the magic back, one voice from the crowd ripped through. “She’d use a blade?”
I knew very little about weapons as they were taught. I knew my education was meager. But the guards at my father’s castle did not train with real blades. Blades were only drawn when the holder was willing to kill.
Khal started to step forward, and without thinking, I grasped his wrist. He looked down at me. “I will be alright,” he said. He didn’t smile. “She will not kill me.”
Not, “I can beat her.” Not, “This will be fine.”
“Trust me,” he said. “I said I would take care of you.” He didn’t pull his arm away.
Maybe I owed him this much trust. Maybe letting him handle conflict with his own family and people was the least I could do. I let him go.
He strode to the center of the ring. “Vrathgar. You have my staff?”
