by Logan Jacobs
“Let’s go,” I snickered as I quickly sobered up.
Ainsley, Theora, and I headed to the forest floor along with the other women. We traversed our land of traps, and then went our separate ways in groups of three. Ainsley and Theora stuck by my side as we ducked deeper into the forest and headed in the direction of the orc camp, where it would be easiest to track down the wargs.
“We should camouflage,” I pointed out when we’d walked for about a half an hour. “Mask our scent and cover our skin so it blends in.”
“Good idea.” Theora nodded.
Ainsley found a patch of meyr berries not too far off, and I once again sucked in a breath as I squished a handful of the nasty red berries in my hand and then smeared their juices all over my chest.
For the first time in my life, I was starting to understand why some people just perpetually stunk. Because I’d turned into one of those people, it seemed.
“These are always horrendous.” Theora wrinkled her nose as she smeared a handful of red juices over her ample bust.
“But they work,” Ainsley sighed. “Now, for some mud?”
“Yup.” I nodded. “We need visual camo as well.”
We found a stream fairly close, since we knew the water had to feed the berries, and then we globbed fistfuls of the soggy, wet stuff all over our arms and faces. So, now not only did I smell, but I was covered in mud, too.
I’d do whatever it took to limit our chances of being caught, though. The less the orcs knew, the better.
Just as we’d finished smearing ourselves in mud, we heard loud footsteps beyond the other side of the stream.
“Hide,” I hissed.
We didn’t have enough time to climb up into the safety of the trees, so we dove behind a few bushes that surrounded the stream and kept out of sight as we waited. Branches scratched and poked at my arms, but I ignored them as I peered through the bushes to watch.
On the other side of the stream, in the direction of the orcs’ camp, two wargs emerged, and between them, they hauled a giant wooden barrel that looked heavy even for them.
Ainsley, Theora, and I shared a look as the three of us eyed the barrels.
Bingo. We’d found our first target.
“I just don’t see why we have to be the ones doing all this dirty work,” one of the wargs grumbled as he used his free hand to scratch at the balls that laid under his tattered loincloth.
I tried to look away from the disgusting scene at the monster’s hand and instead focused on the barrel in their possession.
It looked like a barrel a brewery would use to keep beer in, and it was heavy enough that the wargs had to share the weight equally between them.
“Because this is what the commander wants,” his companion growled. “Carry your share of the weight, would you?”
The monsters hoisted the barrel up on their shoulders and crossed the stream.
I held my breath as they walked right across and stepped next to the bush the women and I hid behind. Inwardly, I prayed they didn’t look down, because we’d be screwed if they did. I hadn’t planned to kill any wargs today, but I would if it came to that.
The monsters came so close I could see the curly black hair on their nasty, lumpy legs, and I could also smell the rancid toe jam stuck between their toes.
But they didn’t look down.
They were just about to disappear into the trees, and I was about to give the women the all clear to follow, when the warg on the right stopped and sniffed heavily at the air.
Shit. This was it. My heart pounded with adrenaline, and I put a hand on my sword so I would be ready.
“Smell that?” the sniffing warg asked his companion.
The other one followed suit and sniffed at the air. For a long, tense moment, I was convinced he’d smelled us, despite our efforts to mask our scents.
“Yeah,” the companion finally grumbled. “It’s those stinking berries. There must be a patch nearby. Let’s get the hell away from it.”
I breathed a quiet sigh of relief when they moved on, and then I motioned for the women to follow behind me.
We tracked their fat, enormous footprints through the forest and kept our ears on alert as we listened for their voices. The entire way, they held basically the same, idiotic conversation about how they shouldn’t have to do all the work. It seemed these dolts were confused about the hierarchy they’d signed up to be a part of.
Thanks to their obvious tracks and loud voices, it wasn’t too hard to follow them until they stopped just inside the tree line on the far beach, in the opposite direction of the orc camp.
Theora, Ainsley, and I hid behind a tall, thick trunked tree as we watched the wargs set the barrel down. It took them a second to be completely happy with the placement, which seemed strangely type A for a couple of dirty monsters, but when they’d gotten the barrel in the right position, they took off back for the camp.
“Ainsley,” I murmured in her ear, “follow them and make sure they don’t come back.”
The blonde nodded once, and then silently got up and crept after the wargs.
“Let’s get rid of this shit,” I told Theora.
We dug a shallow hole, and I used my sword to poke open the top of the barrel. The thing was heavy as hell, but we managed to tip it over fairly quietly. The last thing I needed was for a giant barrel to crash down on the floor and tip off any wargs that might be in our area.
The barrel was only halfway empty, though, when Ainsley sprang back through the trees with a terrified look on her face.
“They are coming back!” she hissed.
“The wargs?” I gasped. “Shit. Theora, help me tip this over so they don’t see the hole.”
With half the oil still in the barrel, Theora and I managed to flip it over as oily black liquid seeped out. Then I kicked some dirt over the hole we’d dug to cover the black stuff that had mostly seeped into the ground.
“Hurry!” Ainsley urged as she whipped around to look back.
Sure enough, the loud footsteps and angry voices of the wargs echoed through the forest.
This time, we were able to scramble up into the trees before the wargs could get to us, and I laid flat out on a branch and peered down as their greasy, balding brown heads came back into view.
“I don’t see why we had to fucking come back,” one of the wargs snarled. “It’s a barrel of oil. Who cares how it’s placed?”
“I do, idiot,” his companion snapped back. “We gotta make sure it’s just perfect when we light it on fire. You want to be the one who’s barrel didn’t work? I’ll let you take that shit up with the commander.”
“No, you’re right,” the companion digressed quickly once the commander’s name had been brought into the mix.
“Told you,” the first warg harrumphed.
I watched with bated breath as he stomped over to the barrel that used to be chock full of oil. His hands were the thing I watched the most closely, to make sure he didn’t check the barrel for oil.
But instead, the warg just stared at it with narrowed eyes.
“Does it look different to you?” he asked his partner.
Shit. I just knew this was it. We’d been discovered, and these wargs would have to die, which would tip off the orcs that we were on to their plan.
“No, it doesn’t,” his companion replied, to my relief, as he looked around nervously. “We need to go back, okay? If we’re gone much longer, they’ll rip our limbs off for taking too much time. We’ve still got to get three more barrels out today.”
The more suspicious warg looked around the forest for a long moment. He glanced at the trunk of the tree, and my heart started to pound as his eyes slowly trailed up it, but then stopped.
“Yeah, alright.” He shrugged. “The barrel’s still here, I guess.”
With that, the two wargs trudged back the way they’d come.
“Follow them again,” I murmured to Ainsley. “And try to keep them away from here, if you can.”
“I will.”
The blonde nodded, and then took off through the trees to follow the wargs from high above this time.
“Well, that was awfully stressful,” Theora sighed as we climbed back down the tree. “Those creatures are very dumb. It is almost sad, in a way.”
“Sad?” I scoffed. “They’re working with the orcs. They can die in a fire, for all I care.”
Theora was quiet for a moment as she appraised me with her wise green eyes.
“How do you know they work for the orcs by choice?” she finally asked. “They may be forced to do such awful things. Just because I feel sorry for them does not mean I will not kill them if they attack.”
With that, the slender woman turned back to the oil barrel and started to shove it over to pour the rest of the oil out.
I watched her curiously as we finished pouring out the black liquid. I’d never thought about the wargs like that before, and when she said it, I almost felt bad for them.
Almost. They were still on the wrong side of this war, as far as I was concerned.
Ainsley, Theora, and I tracked down four more barrels that day before the wargs finally headed back to camp for the night. We overheard the second pair of wargs discuss the orcs plan to fill the island with barrels of oil over the next few days, and we took that back to the village so we could come up with a plan.
When we arrived, the place buzzed with excited energy as everyone discussed how they’d tracked down the wargs and taken down their oil barrels.
“My king.” Mira grinned when I’d arrived on the main platform. “This was a good day.”
“It was,” I chuckled before I turned to the rest of the women. “Can I have everyone’s attention, please?”
I waited as heads turned my way, and when I had all the eyes of the village women on me, I spoke again.
“You all should be proud of yourselves. That was brave, what you did today. But it’s not over. Theora, Ainsley, and I overheard some wargs talking. They don’t have enough resources to guard each barrel, so they plan on putting a lot out there. We have to set up a working rotation of some sort. We can’t leave a single barrel untouched, because even one of those has enough fuel to propel the blaze that will burn down this forest.”
I was met with wide, yet serious gazes. All the women agreed, and we decided on teams to take down the barrels in rotation. For today, Mira, Ainsley, Jemma, and I would patrol the forest in the evening and try to track down every missed barrel we possibly could.
Over the next few days, we built up a system, and things went smoothly. The women not on shift would either train with Mira, sit with me to make more bows and arrows, or tend to the blossoming gardens. Our food supply was growing quickly, and I knew that as soon as we defeated the orcs, the women would thrive.
I split my nights between Mira, Jemma, and Ainsley.
Two weeks went by like this, and everything worked out well. Even Sarayah had begrudgingly joined the rotation, and the brunette seemed to be a little less mad at the situation.
But they had a lot of barrels.
And every time we’d drain one into the dirt, another one would pop up.
Chapter Eleven
As we took down the oil barrels, I decided it was also a good time to work on fortifying the village. If I had to leave unexpectedly for any reason, I didn’t want them to be without protection.
The first thing on my to-do list was to set up some more traps for the wargs down on the forest floor. So, I took as many village women as I could, and we spread our spike traps out far and wide. Now that we all were able to travel through the canopy, the women could easily use the trees to get beyond the borders of our traps, and then drop down to the forest floor in order to hunt. The wargs, though, weren’t able to climb up into the trees the way we could, so they’d either fall victim to our spike traps, or turn around.
I’d dug about ten of the holes by midday, and I planted massive spikes in all of them. Then I took a little bit of precious extra time to make sure the pointed tips were just a little bit sharper.
It was almost as if the forest had decided to leave us all alone that day. No fycans attacked, and we didn’t run across any nasty, ugly wargs.
When the holes were dug and I was satisfied the ground was well taken care of, I went back up to the village and checked on what used to be an empty tent, but now functioned as our armory.
I strung a few extra bows and carved out some more arrows to make sure the women were not left without protection. If something happened, like a broken bow or a lost quiver of arrows, it wouldn’t cause a problem.
One morning, I was on the main platform around noon, ready to take over the afternoon shift with Mira, Sarayah, Theora, and Jemma, but then Netta and her group returned frantically.
Except it wasn’t the entire group. There were only three women on the platform in front of me, instead of five.
“Where are Yin and Kola?” Theora demanded.
“They’re gone,” Netta panted, and her green eyes were wild with panic. “We were all in the trees when we heard a commotion down below, and then they were just gone.”
Shit. My heart instantly sank at her words. There was a difference between gone and dead, and this woman knew that. Yin and Kola weren’t dead, which could only mean one thing.
“Show me where they were,” I told the women.
Netta took Mira, Theora, and I to the place where she’d heard the commotion happen. I dropped down from the trees to the forest floor just on the outskirts of the beach, and for a few moments, I walked around and saw nothing. There were only the trees and bushes, and nothing more.
The entire time we’d been on this island, nothing like this had happened. No one had died or been kidnapped at the hands of these wargs.
And not only that, but now two of the women were gone at once, and that could only mean one thing.
They would soon put their plan into motion.
I walked around the spot where the barrel had sat and trailed a few feet into the forest. Then I spotted something white on one of the tree trunks, and I strode closer to get a better look.
I instantly recognized the object as a piece of cloth from one of the women’s tunics, but the brilliant white of the cloth was marred by an ugly red stain.
“Blood,” Mira muttered behind me.
“We need to find them,” I murmured back to her, quiet enough that the other women couldn’t hear. “And then, we need to set up our plan of attack. We can’t let this go on anymore.”
“I agree.” She nodded.
“Let’s go back to camp,” I told Netta.
The red-haired deer woman looked at me, half fearful, half wondering, and she tilted her head and rubbed at the antlers that grew out of her scalp.
“What are you planning to do?” she asked, and her voice trembled ever so slightly, so I forced a calm smile to my face.
“We’ll find them,” I told her. “I promise.”
And I’d never made a promise I couldn’t keep.
Back at the village, we were immediately inundated with questions as soon as we stepped foot inside. I’d expected that, though, so I raised a hand for silence.
Once a hush fell over the crowd, I chose my words carefully and started to speak.
“The orcs are getting braver,” I told them. “Yin and Kola have been taken by the wargs, but I am fairly sure they’re alive. I want to form a search party to go and look for them.”
I prepared myself for the torrent of questions that always seemed to accompany any announcement I made, but they never came. Instead, I was met with dead silence.
Every single woman in the village stared at me with wide, terrified eyes, and for the first time in a while, they reminded me of the women Mira and I had met when we’d first arrived. These kidnappings had rocked them to their cores, and it was as if they women had returned to their former selves, full of fear and unwilling to do much to protect themselves.
But, to my absolute shock, Sarayah stepped forward and gave me a full-on sm
ile. She was beautiful when she did that. It was an expression I didn’t think I’d ever seen on her before, and I appreciated it not only for that reason, but for the sudden camaraderie she showed as well.
“My sisters,” the brunette started, “I admit I have been skeptical about this from the beginning. Just the other week, I wanted to escape this island and sail to a place where we would be safe. Today, though, something has shifted. Our sisters are missing, but we now know from Kella that this is not an automatic death sentence. Yin and Kola are likely being held captive by the wargs and the invaders, and it is our duty from the Goddess to do everything we can to find them and bring them home safely.”
Shock did not even begin to cover exactly what I felt in this moment. A little bit of awe, possibly, for the magical way Sarayah spoke, but it was even more than that.
If this woman, who’d doubted me so seriously just the other week and from the very beginning, had changed her mind about me, then hell, anything was possible.
“Thanks.” I gave the brunette my most disarming smile, and she nodded in return, but I caught the twitch at the corners of her lips.
She so wanted to smile. I’d win her over eventually.
“So, are we in agreement?” I asked the crowd.
One by one, the women all nodded.
“We are in agreement,” Sarayah promised me.
“Good, then let’s go find them,” I told her. “We need to gather supplies and form a group. Everyone hurry. We’ve got a ticking clock on this. I want to find Yin and Kola before they’re taken back to the orc camp, where we’ll have to fight off a lot more wargs.”
With each passing moment, I grew a little bit more comfortable. I still wasn’t completely satisfied, though I was afraid I never would be. The amount of nervous energy that had overtaken me ever since we’d heard the orcs’ plans was insane. I just hoped the deer women would be ready in time.
Which was why I needed to have one last conversation with Mira before I left.
I found the jade haired warrior in her tent with her sea glass sword and her back to the front flap. I watched in silence for a moment as she danced forward and back while she practiced her swordsmanship. Her beautiful blade whistled through the air, over and over again, with Mira at its other end, and I loved the way she swung the sword. I was good with one, sure, but where Mira was concerned, it was an absolute art form.
