Page 31 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

The woman they’d freed was wailing there, bleeding and maimed.

Panting, he and Gathren surveyed her.

“Well,” said Gathren, “we got her out. Perhaps it’s up to the next traveling group to do the rest.”

“Yes,” he said. “Perhaps so.”

“Of course, if the orcs find her, they’ll just slit her throat,” said Gathren, rubbing her face with one hand.

“Do you care, warrioress?”

“Don’t you, my lord?” she said pointedly.

They were quiet.

Gathren cast her gaze down. “There’s a chapel in Matlinrir.”

“Yes, I know it,” he said. “That’s nearly a half hour out of the way, which will mean a whole hour lost for us, not to mention whatever time we’ve lost here, doing this.”

“Well, she’d be safe there,” said Gathren.

He sighed.

“You don’t have to come,” said Gathren with a shrug. “I will take her. You go on to Cirlahir. It’s been lovely knowing you, my lord. Well, lovely is perhaps the wrong word, but it has been… something.”

He shook his heed. “No, I’ll come along.”

“Why are you intent on coming with me?” she said.

He didn’t know. “You’ll have trouble with the monks at the chapel, undoubtedly. They might not take well to an orc, especially considering everything that’s happened today.”

She sighed, nodding. “Well, that is true. I do appreciate it.” She surveyed him. “But I don’t understand it.”

He was simply stalling. He didn’t want to go home. He would do anything to put that off.

Perhaps not anything.

But going to Matlinrir? Why not?

GATHREN WAS HORRIFIED to find the chapel on fire.

They had seen the smoke as they were approaching, but she had not thought it would be the chapel burning. There should be some sort of consideration, she thought. Sacred spaces should not be destroyed.

But the chapel was in flames. The stone bell tower was intact, but inside, all of the monks had been killed.

She and Iahir discovered this as they ascended the steps in the tower. They had left the elf woman, who was still wailing and hurling insults at them both, outside.

At each floor, they walked through and found all of the bodies. The dead monks were slumped over writing desks, slumped over on the floors, streaks of blood on the walls showing the path they had slid down from where they’d been pinned and stabbed.

“Why?” she said softly. “Why the monks?”

“It was days ago, it seems,” said Iahir. “Judging from the smell.”

“No, that fire—”

“That may have been lit recently, but your army has been working its way toward the capital city,” said Iahir. “You seem surprised, when I heard that your strategy thus far was some kind of token rape.”

She swallowed. “Yes, I suppose.” At the keeps in the north, the army invaded, found the lady of the house, and then one orc raped her in front of her husband before slitting his throat. She had never quite understood why such a thing was necessary, but those in charge claimed it broke the elves’ spirits.