Khala screamed.
She was in danger.
And whoever scared her like that was going to pay for it, dearly.
With a mace in one hand and a sword in the other, I broke through the bushes and onto the clearing in front of my hunting cabin.
A giant mud toad hovered its disgusting open mouth over Khala, who lay on her back on the ground.
Hot, red rage blinded me. With a thundering roar, I rushed to the toad and smashed my mace against its wide, flat head.
Khala twisted at the waist, reaching for the ax on the ground to her right.
The toad made a gross wet sound deep in its throat. The pockets on its back opened, releasing two mockheads. Only two. The other pockets seemed empty already, the toad’s slimy skin hanging loosely over their openings.
I cut one of the mockheads with my sword.
A growl on my left made me pivot that way, with both my sword and my mace raised. A fully-grown river dog faced me,with its head menacingly low and its ears flattened against its skull.
A river dog presented a far greater danger than a toad’s mockhead. I swung my mace at the canine.
“No!” Khala scrambled to her feet, putting herself between me and the dog. “Don’t hurt her!”
The last mockhead leaped toward my woman, snapping its mouth full of teeth. I dropped my mace on it, smashing it into nothing but a wet spot.
The toad waddled toward Khala, still determined to make dinner out of her. Khala swung the ax, holding it with both hands, then embedded it firmly into the toad’s eye, bursting it open. Blood and mud dripped down the toad’s face. With its one eye destroyed, its other one rotated in its socket wildly.
I adjusted my sword in my hand, stepping around Khala to get to the toad. A loud “humph” came from Khala’s chest as she raised her ax again and hacked it into the toad’s shoulder. The creature belched out a screech, moving on Khala with its mouth wide open and ready to swallow her whole.
“Fuck,” I cursed, setting my mace down on the toad’s head, popping its other eye out and smashing its skull to pieces.
The toad burped a bubble of foul-smelling slime, then dropped to the ground, dead.
“Thanks,” Khala panted, catching her breath in labored gasps. “I never thought I could lift this.” She glanced at my massive ax in her hands with appreciation. The expression of pride and determination on her face was that of a warrior queen, not of a wild thing lost in the woods. But there certainly was a wild side to her that even she didn’t seem to have known about.
“Well we did it, didn’t we?” She beamed at me.
“We sure did.” I grinned, tossing my weapons aside and opening my arms wide for a hug I ached to give her.
With the sweetest smile that I’d missed so much, she jumped into my arms.
“I missed you, my wild thing,” I confessed, catching her and pressing her to me.
She cupped my cheek. “I can’t believe I’d ever say this to any man, especially a bog orc, but I missed you too.”
The tear in the tunic on her shoulder was smeared with red.
“You’re hurt,” I worried.
She glanced at it.
“Oh, one of those nasty things bit me. Is their bite poisonous?”
“No.”
“Then it can wait. I made something for you, to make the time pass faster,” she said with a shy smile.
“I brought you a whole basket of pretty things too.” I shrugged the straps of the basket off my shoulders, finally setting the thing down.
