By My Side ... (A Valentine's Day Story) (6 page)

A pang of homesickness had let
her heart skip a beat. She missed Adrianus, the absent-minded
scholar of her childhood. She missed the stories, missed the man
who had spent hours upon hours explaining to her some obscure poem,
some long forgotten verse form. It mattered little that over the
last few years she had come close to hating him. She still missed
him, talking to Reschkar, relating one anecdote after the other,
only made her realise how much.

But she had begun to miss him
long before leaving the court. Her inability to bond, and the ever
increasing pressure on her, mixed with the barely veiled
disappointment in the eyes of all who met her, had destroyed more
than just her self-confidence. It had destroyed the intimate
strands of love holding her to her family.

Elena answered his inquiries
openly, not only in honour of the promise she had given, but from
her innate sense of fairness. She spoke even when her words
revealed her own inadequacies, her failure to bond on so many
occasions. She had long since learnt to separate herself from her
pain, to live with the failure she was. Not even when he began to
quiz her directly on the bonding process and the different measure
that had been taken, did her voice waver from its deliberate and
passive tone.

"I have failed to bind each
year since the age of sixteen, though it was attempted during the
traditional binding periods and outside. It is considered unlikely
that I will bond in future. However, there is a chance that a
change in the preparatory methods might break my shields and allow
for a bonding."

And if not, then he could still
use her blood, for as long as it lasted at least. It was the
unspoken corollary to that sentence. His large hands began to
smooth along the tense strands of muscles under his hands, his
thumbs digging into the tension in her thighs, making her realise
how stiff her body had become. His voice, though, showed no sign of
any excitement or anger.

"Preparation?"

It was easier to speak about
the ErGer bond as if it was an academic topic, wholly divorced from
her own life.

"Common wisdom suggests that
even around Valentine's Day, when an ErGer's mental walls are
compromised by the bonding agent accumulating in the blood, it is
wisest to impose physical and emotional limits of endurance on her
before attempting a bond. The theory is that an ErGer will then, in
an instinctive form of self-preservation, initiate the bond herself
in order to make her survival a priority to those in control. The
most common methods are pain or humiliation over an extended period
of time leading to St Valentine's Day. Less common are methods that
will push the ErGer to the brink of death -- due to obvious
reasons. They can backfire rather badly."

"Common wisdom?" His voice
sounded choked.

"Adrianus has, quietly,
collected a wide range of documentation regarding ErGer. Especially
outside the bonding frenzy on Valentine's day, it is necessary to
undermine the mental shields of an ErGer through either fear or
pain combined with sex. Even on Valentine's Day, there will not be
a permanent bond if the bonding partner is not able to suppress the
re-establishment of the mental shields."

A bond outside those days
around St Valentine, when the blood agent accumulated and drugged
the ErGer, was rare, some thought all the instances thereof as
nothing more than pure myth. But as ErGer were so scarce, and as
most courts preferred to avoid the bloody duels fought for access
to the few there were, rules had been established to avoid
unnecessary bloodshed. Any court could hold an ErGer -- but outside
those few days in February, a Lord had to allow anyone access to
the ErGer, permitting attempts at bonding at least once a month.
That was nothing more than the sad reality of an ErGer's life.

Still, it was hard to continue
to speak. The topic cut too close to her heart, brought to mind too
well the desolation of her last few years. It was almost impossible
to preserve her academic air. But she would tell him. She had
promised him she would not withhold any information which might
prove useful for a bonding, but if she had to give him the tools to
destroy her, she might as well get it over fast. Her words sped up,
almost tumbling over each other.

"There was no way for Adrianus
to keep my existence a secret from other courts, and even had he
been able to, his own courtiers would have demanded the opportunity
to bond me. He bought me three years by insisting I was too young
to be subjected to the rigours of bonding outside my immediate
surrounding -- but then he had to allow them access."

She took a deep breath, somehow
feeling this did not do the situation justice.

"He did all he could. Even
though he let them try, he made clear that he would only allow it
under certain conditions: no blood, no broken skin or permanent
injury, nothing that would threaten my wellbeing, no choking or
prolonged starvation."

"How magnanimous of him."

There was a strange bitterness
in his words and for a moment she wondered if he felt betrayed. Her
inability to bond was common knowledge among non-humans of all
kinds, a tantalising piece of salacious information bandied around
to enliven a dull conversation. When her presence in Innsbruck had
leaked to the other courts there had been a sudden increase in the
visitors to the court but after too many attempts to bond her had
failed, the interest had waned.

Even now there would be one or
two a year who found their way to Innsbruck in a fool's hope they
could succeed where others had failed, but by and large the world
had accepted that she was defective. They thought her disabled in
some way which would make a bond unlikely at best. She had heard
too often how a disgruntled visitor had counselled Adrianus to
simply drain her, to make use of her blood as she was good for
nothing else.

Yes, she had banked on his
ignorance as to her deficiencies when she had struck the bargain
with him -- but when he had made clear that he knew of her she had
assumed he knew all her failures. But what if he had not? What if
he, an orc, had not heard all the dirty details of the disabled
ErGer, the stone around Lord Adrianus's neck? She knew some called
her
Adrianus's Folly
, a play on the title of his most famous
poem,
Alexander's Folly
, in which he described the downfall
of Alexander the Great.

She must have made a noise, or
he had picked up her disquiet from the way she had tensed on his
back, for he turned his head to her. There was no anger or
disappointment on his features. There was nothing there. His face
remained void of any emotion. In some ways, that lack of expression
was worse.

After a moment he continued his
inquisition, only mild interest in his voice.

"Adrianus chose your
partners?"

"Only after he failed to bond
himself."

For the first time in the two
nights he had been carrying her, his stride lost its even rhythm,
the small stumble making her chin collide with his shoulder bone
rather painfully. She tasted salty copper and knew she had bitten
her own tongue. Instinct let her shift her weight, counterbalance
his sudden move in preparation of a fall -- but she never had to
make good of it. He caught his balance and had resumed his even
gait within a split second.

"Adrianus tried to bond you
with sex himself?"

The question almost amused her.
Why else would Adrianus have sheltered and fed a human child for
such a long time?

"Of course. He tried for almost
three years and even when he was forced to allow others access to
me, he still would attempt a bond during the bonding frenzy around
Valentine's Day."

"When did he start?"

She felt the anger in his
posture, his every movement, and knew it was not directed at her
but at her guardian. It should have gratified her. It was anger on
her behalf. But she felt the need to make excuses for the man she
had considered her father.

Adrianus had not done anything
reprehensible in the eyes of the supernatural courts, to be exact
most considered the measures he had taken to protect her as pure
foolishness. She was an ErGer, it was her nature that had forced
the expediency of bonding on Adrianus -- not trying to bond would
have been akin to finding a treasure and leaving it behind for
another to take. Even among humans she had been old enough to marry
when Adrianus had first tried to initiate a bond.

"I was almost seventeen, long
past the age when many others of my age already had their first
child. It was worse for him than it was for me. He could barely
..." here she searched in vain for the words to express what she
needed to say and finally settled on "... perform."

"How was it for you?" For a
moment she thought she had misheard the question, that he had not
asked this, but when he turned his head to look at her she saw
concentrated interest in his eyes. Heat warmed her cheeks, her
embarrassment acute. Uncomfortable, she tried to make little of
it.

"Intensely embarrassing, but it
was not particularly painful or horrible." He looked at her for
another moment before he fell silent again.

His silence did not last and
before long he was asking her about her interests, her favourite
foods and colours. He kept her talking for most of the eight days
they travelled through the Austrian Alps towards Italy.

On the ninth day they crested a
mountain path and across the valley the towering walls of a dark
castle stood in a strange welcome. Elena knew, somehow, that this
was their destination. A subtle change in the atmosphere among the
orcs surrounding them, an anticipation of return in the men and an
almost nervous expectation in the women. This was not a ruined
shell, not the dirty remains of a once great house waiting to be
restored -- as the castle outside Innsbruck had been. This building
was a well defended fortress with all the signs of regular and good
repair. A strange certainty rose in her. She felt Reschkar's eyes
on her as they moved towards the waiting gates.

"You never intended to take
Innsbruck, did you?"

There was no particular
interest in her voice as she asked the question, nor any ire. He
matched her tone with the same studied casualness as he
replied:

"No."

"What did you want in Innsbruck
then?"

Now she met his eyes and saw
calm gentleness there -- but also steel below it.

"I came to find an ErGer and
believe me, I would have killed anyone who might have stood in my
way in order to do so."

Well, that answered the
question. He had known what he had come for.

Control

She woke in a warm, soft bed,
rested and clearer in her mind than she had been for days. She also
woke to an orc's eyes fixed on her face, flames reflected in their
yellow depth, their expression pensive and intent. He sat on a
chair beside the bed, close enough to touch, had she stretched out
her hand. The firelight played over the plains of his still bare
torso, though she noticed he had exchanged the black leather of his
trousers and boots for more comfortable dark green wool. His feet
were bare, the sharp claws scraping against the cold stone slabs of
the floor. Elbows resting on his knees, leaning towards her without
any sign of impatience. He gave all indication of having sat there,
watching her, studying her, for hours.

Elena did not move. There was
nothing to move for. The light told her it was evening, if not
night. She must have slept through the day, her exhaustion keeping
her under far longer than was usual. Her mind thought back to their
arrival here.

They had reached the castle in
the early hours of the day, exhausted, frozen to the bone, with a
blizzard at their heels. Even Reschkar had come close to his limits
on the last ascent, stumbling repeatedly and still denying her
request to let her walk on her own. By the time they had reached
the gates, they could barely see three metres ahead, so thickly had
the snow fallen. The icy fingers of the wind seemed to penetrate
even her skin and Reschkar had stopped asking her to tell him about
her life hours ago. It might have been out of recognition of her
exhaustion or in face of the volume of the rising wind, she did not
know, but they had not exchanged a word for most of the night.
Entering the castle gates, the sudden cessation of the constant
pull of the wind on hair and clothes, had been a relief, at first.
Then the relative quiet intruded on her awareness and it was louder
than the clap of thunder.

A grating sound, the tortured
scream of wood and metal, chains straining under the weight of the
heavy gate, replaced the muted sound of the wind. Reschkar had let
her slip from his shoulders with a sigh of relief, barely
controlling her descent, letting her stumble where he would have
caught her otherwise. Elena only realised the toll the last hours,
days, had had on him as she watched him then, bent over, sides
heaving. It left her speechless. He had seemed so indestructible, a
being outside reality, full of unlimited strength and power. All
the orcs had appeared to her like beings without weakness, at least
physical weakness.

Every story of her childhood
contained an orc, more often than not as the monster. They were
near mythical in their invulnerability. It was the combination of
frightening looks, coupled with the legend of their strength, which
made it easy to ignore any common sense when judging their powers.
She stood besides Reschkar, almost viscerally aware how those
stereotypes in her mind were cracking. Suddenly unsure what to do
in the face of this new realisation of his humanity. How do you
react when a stone, all of a sudden, gets up and turns out to be a
living, breathing being?