Page 29 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

“So, then, home? Back to your father?”

His expression shuttered. “Well, you know what they say? Home is the place where, when you’ve nowhere else to go, they have to take you?”

“Is that a saying?”

“Say we can travel together, warrioress,” he sang, throwing his head back, his golden hair gleaming in the morning sun. “We were only apart for forty minutes, and it was horrible. I missed you wretchedly.”

In spite of herself, she found herself laughing. “Oh, fine. But just until the road forks past Jilinharil.”

“All right,” he said. “Just until then.”

IAHIR WAS A bit stunned at the state of everything.

They went past a number of smaller houses which were smoldering or fully on fire. Others were littered with bodies in the doorways and front steps.

Admittedly, all of the bodies were not elvish bodies. Some were orc bodies, too. It was carnage.

He supposed he hadn’t really thought the orcs quite had it in them. Not because he didn’t think that orcs were strong and vicious, he supposed, but…

It wasn’t that.

He had not thought orcs could prevail against the Valaedor elves, with their superior technology and their superior organized governments and all of that.

It was only thirty years ago that the Valaedor had crushed the Cirdan elves in the north. Before then, there had been two kingdoms, the northern elvish kingdom and the southern one. They had always been at odds, and they had been at war off and on for, well, always. It was the way of things, wasn’t it? For two groups of people to hate each other and squabble over the same land?

Anyway, the Valaedor had decisively beaten the other elves, who had not the resources to make a stand.

So, how had the orcs done it?

They’d been supplied with guns and cannons and the like, and he supposed that was simply a matter of buying it up. The orc commander had explained that they’d come through the north taking over keeps that had little in the way of resistance. They’d had one big skirmish to take over Bilkwood, the old southern capital, but had otherwise taken the whole place slowly and rather silently. Then, he supposed, they’d bided their time and made this concentrated attack on Renegahan.

It was probably his fault, in fact.

If the king had not been dead, he would have declared war.

Iahir remembered, just a few months ago, a rather intense debate that had gripped the court. Parliament wanted to have the ability to declare war. Currently, it could only be done by the sovereign. He remembered that everyone had argued about it, up and down, at dinner and in the hallways and outside the operas, and he had found it all very boring, but…

The proposal had been struck down. It had not carried.

Findas had wanted to protect his power, Iahir knew. The Parliament had sought, constantly, to limit it.

When they crested to the top of the hill on the other side of the city, he looked at the city, the emptiness of it, the stillness, where usually the streets would be full of carriages and movement.

My fault, he thought. All those dead on my head.

He glanced over at Gathren. Perhaps she shared some of the blame, however, with her treachery and her lies and her scheming.

Maybe that was why he wanted to be close to her. Maybe that made things a bit easier for him, having her along to share his guilt.

They traveled easily until they came to an overturned carriage in the middle of the road, only ten miles or so outside of the city.

The horses had gotten free and run off, and it was just lying there, right on its side, one door open to the heavens.

Gathren reined in and dismounted. “You think we can right this and push it off the road? No carriages can get around otherwise.”

“I wouldn’t have taken you for such an altruist, warrioress,” he said lightly, but he dismounted, too.

When they got up on the carriage, however, they discovered it was not empty. There was an elf woman inside. She had the dark crimson hair that marked her as a Cirdan elf, one of the northern nobility. Her leg was likely broken, given the way it was twisted up in the broken carriage seats.