Honor Among Orcs (Orc Saga) (23 page)

“Forgive me, it’s only—might I ask your name?”

“Ha!” He slapped the arm of his chair and chuckled. “Not sure if I’m friend or foe, yet, eh? Well, fair enough. There was a time Vanadis had me wondering which way was up, too. Thank the Ancestors for Asfarth, or I might have lost my sense more permanently.” He puffed on his pipe. “My name, yes. The orcs call me Fossegrim. The elves, something else, but that hardly matters to you. It surely doesn’t matter one whit to me. And you are Arianna, fair princess of Gautar.”

“How did you know?”

“Waterfalls whisper.” He drummed his fingers lightly on the wood. “That witch isn’t the only one with spies, thank you. Bolvarr warned me you’d be coming, and you’re the only human this side of the mountains, besides. Wish he’d mentioned the rest, but it’s done now, and no one the wiser. You can’t imagine what kind of fuss we would have had if someone else had come across that fool orc in the water.”

Something squeezed hard around her heart. “Bolvarr can’t have gotten here so quickly.”

The elf’s eyes narrowed. “How did you think you found your way here, girl?”

“Bolvarr told me you lived on the river…” But the way he was looking at her made her wonder if that wasn’t the wrong answer, true or not.

“The river is some trek from Asvi’s, plenty of room to get lost on the way.”

“I just—walked.” Her face burned, though why she should be embarrassed for finding him, she wasn’t sure. “And then I found a little fall, farther up, and followed it down until I saw your little harbor, and the path.”

“Most people, even elves, wouldn’t have seen the harbor, or the path. I rather appreciate my privacy, you see. Don’t like to be bothered by fools, not that it stops all of them by any means.” His gaze shifted to a curtained door and settled with a snort. “Bolvarr, indeed. You might as well go on in, then.”

“In?”

He waggled his fingers with impatience, nodding toward the room beyond the curtain. “In, girl.”

“But I—”

“Ancestors save us! Better you than me who wakes him. Mind you, keep your voice down. I can’t promise Hjalli ran so far off he won’t hear you if you start screaming the way some females do, and how I’m going to explain that—well, I’m sure you’ll have better things to do than squeal, eh?”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

She glanced back once, but Fossegrim only raised bushy eyebrows, so she pushed the canvas curtain aside. The small bedroom was dark, taken up by the large bed in the middle of the far wall, and a chest of drawers beside it. With the curtain pulled back, a sliver of light cut across the mattress, revealing a green-grey shoulder, tattooed and scarred. The broad back could never have been mistaken as Bolvarr’s.

Blood roared in her ears, her heart pounding strangely. Her feet carried her across the room without conscious thought, her hand reaching out. Dead and cold, she had felt him die! She had felt her heart seize and her lungs share his last breath. But the scars beneath her fingertips were warm. Warm and alive, and her heart seemed to fly.

A hot hand closed over her wrist, hard as iron, his body moving beneath her touch. Yellow eyes glowed, alive and warm and awake. She tore away the blanket with her other hand, searching him for some mark, some sign of a wound. Nothing, nothing but the same old scars, the lashes across his back and chest, the knife between his ribs. Well healed, now. Her eyes filled with tears, unbidden, rising back to his face, blurred now, too blurred to know his expression.

“Bolthorn?”

And then he had her pinned to the bed, a knife in his hand instead of her wrist. The blade opened her palm, then his. He grasped her hand so tightly the bones pressed together. She bit her tongue on a cry, remembering Fossegrim’s warning, but the tears spilled down her cheeks, and Bolthorn stared at her, grim-faced.

“Let my life be bound to yours and what strength I have steady you.” It burned, hot and stinging, but when she tried to twist free, he growled, his eyes glowing brighter still. “Let our hearts beat together, even as our thoughts laugh, and my health serve yours, as yours must serve mine. As you are mine from this day on, body and blood, heart and soul!” His fingers laced through hers, his hold gentling and the press of his body easing from her, as if he only then realized how bruising his strength had become. “Together, we go on, husband and wife. Or not at all.”

He released her at once, sitting back on his heels, and the fire left her veins. She closed her hand around the cut, cradling it against her chest as she sat up. She wasn’t certain what to say, what to do, but she could not look away from his face, hard and grim still.

“I had thought once, that it might wait,” he said slowly, when the silence stretched too long between them. “That we would say our vows among family and friends. It was a fool’s hope.”

She exhaled, her stomach uncoiling from the tight knot it had known since she had felt his death. “I have never known you to be a fool.”

His hand opened, revealing his blooded palm, then closed self-consciously, as though he would hide the wound. Her heart wrenched, and she stopped him, pressing his hand against her cheek, bloodied or not. Warm and solid. Alive. His fingers curled into her hair, drawing her closer, wrapping her in his arms so tight she barely breathed at all.

She could not bring herself to care.

She wept, and he held her until she calmed, until she could speak again, in more than just gasps and sobs. Never again, he swore. Never again would he let her go.

“I thought you were dead. She told me you were dead. I begged her to let me go to you, but she wouldn’t let me out. The cold and the storms and the snow. She said it would kill me, and you needed my strength to heal, to fight. She said men had crossed the mountain! That they killed you, and I must go back to stop the war, to save us all.”

“Shh,” he said, stroking her hair. She was so soft, and it had been so long since he had held her last, shivering in the snow. Rosewater. She still smelled like rosewater. He hid his face in the warmth of her hair and breathed. “It does not matter now.”

“Bolthorn, I
felt
you die!”

He pulled back, meeting her tear-blurred eyes. Ever since the quartz had drawn him to safety, he had watched her, weeping in the dark and despondent and hollow-eyed during the day. He understood now, why she had come here, if all that time she had thought him dead.

He caught her hand, gently now, and brought it to his chest, holding it flat over his heart. “What do you feel, now?”

“I—” She drew a breath, staring at her hand beneath his. Her fingers curled just slightly, pressing into his skin. “I feel your heart beating, and mine.” A tension drained from her body with the words, but when she lifted her face, his gut twisted with shared pain. “Why didn’t you come? If you were alive all this time, why didn’t you come?”

The anguish in her words seared him. What could she have thought, all this time? She had to have known he would not abandon her so easily. He cupped her cheek, brushed his thumb over her lips. This was not how he had thought their reunion would be. In all his dreams, she had been kissing him, needing him, loving him. Not heartache, bitter and broken still, while he held her in his arms. Vanadis had ruined even this.

“I searched the whole mountain, every cave, every fissure, every crack in the stone. Vanadis forbade me to follow, but I tried. I wanted nothing more. If I had only completed the vow before I brought you through the passage—” he shook his head, his throat too thick to continue. “Forgive me, Arianna. Please.”

She turned her face into the curve of his shoulder, falling back into his arms. “All this time, she let me think that you were dead. That you had sent me away to keep me safe. She would have had me leave you behind, and the baby—”

His hand fisted in her hair. “Baby?”

“She said she knew, even before I could. I’ve been waiting—another three weeks, I think, until I can be certain.”

He forced himself to let go, his fingers uncurling reluctantly. “Ours?”

She jerked back, her eyes going hard. “You doubt me?”

“No!” He caught her before she had disentangled herself from his lap and the blankets of the bed. “No, Princess. It is only, we had so little time. I never dreamed…” She had no idea how rare it was. A child born this way, conceived so easily between them. He stroked her cheek, the softness of it, the warmth. Her cheeks had flushed, but now she calmed, her eyes closing and her face turning toward his touch. “I only hoped, once I had you back, that we might try.”

And then he kissed her, parting her lips, tasting her mouth as he had ached to know the rest of her body these past weeks apart. She sighed against him, her body warming beneath his hands, forming to his until there was no space left between them. Body and blood, heart and soul, and she was his.

Forever his.

“Princess?” Fossegrim’s gruff voice brought her back from the edge of sleep, curled inside the curve of Bolthorn’s body. His arm tightened around her waist before she even thought of moving and she did not have to look to know he was awake. “You’ve a visitor.”

Bolthorn growled low against the back of her neck.

“He insists on speaking with you, Ancestors only know why. Wonder what the world’s coming to when an elf can’t offer a lost girl his hospitality for a night. And why he thinks you ought to be dragged through the forest at this hour, I surely don’t know, when it’s clear to me you’re plum exhausted. All that blood-letting, I expect, journeying through the mountain. Catches up to a body in the end.” Fossegrim paused. “Are you awake, Princess?”

“A moment.” She pushed back the blanket, slipping out from beneath Bolthorn’s arm, and reached for her gown. Bolthorn watched her narrow-eyed but did not stop her. She didn’t bother with the bodice, all the better to appear as though she had been sleeping.

Bolthorn rose silently, reaching only for his knife. Her chest tightened. There was no doubt in her mind what he meant to do if this visitor tried to take her, now. If her face was white with fear perhaps it would be mistaken for illness, and better that than the look of a woman well-loved.

Bolthorn moved into the shadow, where the light from the curtain would not reach him, and she slipped through. Fossegrim nodded, his lips thin and tight.

“Folks these days have no respect for the weary or the old, I fear. Makes an old elf wonder if they’d even obey the Ancestors, anymore,” Fossegrim said, his voice raised to be heard through the door. He hooked it open with his stick, revealing Hjalli, arms crossed.

Arianna let Fossegrim stand between them and smoothed her skirt, doing her best to look rumpled with sleep. She did not look back, dared not look back to where Bolthorn hid. An apology formed in her mouth, but she swallowed it and raised her chin. “I must have lost track of the sun,” she said instead.

“Don’t think you’ll be making off with her, boy!” Fossegrim added, jabbing at him with his stick. Hjalli jerked back. “All you need do is look to see how worn she is. The girl needs her rest if she’s going to be any use at all, or would you rather she take a fever than sleep one night under my roof? It’s too cold to have her dragged out now the sun’s down.”

“I promised Asvi and the Vala I’d be sure she was safe and cared for, Nykur.”

“And so you have, though how you think dragging the poor girl out of bed is caring for her, only the Ancestors know. I’ve half a mind to speak to the Vala myself, next time she comes through, and the council too, from what I heard. Vanadis had no right to bring the girl this far at all, and now this! The girl’s free, isn’t she?”

Hjalli stiffened. “Of course she is.”

“Well, then!” Fossegrim’s voice held a note of warning that made Hjalli pale. “She’s chosen to spend her night here, and that’s the end of it. Run off and tell Asvi
I
said so, and I’ll deliver the princess back when she’s ready. Not before.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“When she’s ready,” Fossegrim growled. “Tomorrow or a month from now, and frankly, if she never wanted to spend another night under your roof, I wouldn’t blame her. No manners, no consideration, no respect at all.” His stick snaked out, and the door slammed. “Worthless. Utterly worthless. And they wonder why I live out here.”

He grumbled a little longer, banging around the small room and throwing another log into the hearth fire. Arianna went to the window, peeking through the shutters, but she saw no sign of Hjalli, nor even a sprinkling of needles and swaying branches to mark his path.

“Has he really gone?” she asked, her voice low. “Was he here the whole time?”

“Somewhere, I imagine.” Fossegrim glanced toward the bedroom and Arianna followed his gaze. Bolthorn filled the doorway, his head cocked, listening. “I suppose it’s for the best you came when you did. He’ll be watching me, now. Well?”

“Unless he’s learned to stop his heart, he cannot hear us,” Bolthorn said. He slid the knife into his belt. The king’s knife, she realized, and flexed her hand where he had cut it. Her father’s knife. “For now.”

Fossegrim grunted. “You’ll be stuck here for a time.”

Bolthorn shrugged, opening his hand to her. Arianna took it, her heart easing with his touch. In the full light, she could see the scar at his side more clearly, grey against the green of his skin, but whole and clean. Alive. Even the word filled her with a giddy joy. Alive, and they were together, and bound. Husband and wife.