Arranged to The War Chief Ch. 01

It was eerily quiet, and I took a few minutes to compose myself. Now was not the time to do this. There were windows and soft grass below. If I could tie together the drapes and fasten them to something heavy enough, heavier than myself, then I could try to lower myself into the yard. Even if I failed, I might die. If not, no man in his right mind would accept a crippled wife. Even a monster would see me as nothing more than damaged goods, incapable of bearing an heir to whatever hell he reigned over amongst his kind.

Just as I had convinced myself this was definitely a legitimate idea, and not a last resort born from sheer hysteria and lunacy, I heard a terrible sound. Looking over my shoulder, I watched as one of the doors suddenly lurched open with no warning. With a shriek, I dropped the drape I had been attempting to tear down and palmed my cue stick.

Turned to the side, my betrothed entered the billiard room. Once he was inside, he closed the door behind him. The enormous grayish green brute looked at me in the corner and my lungs ceased all function. His head was large, squared in shape and defined quite intensely by a large jaw that supported four tusks growing from his lower set of teeth. The two innermost tusks almost reached his nose, and the outer two nearly came to his eyes, which were intense and dark. There was no soul in them, similar to an animal. His long, black hair was braided and adorned with bones, odd jewelry, and a hooded fur cloak made from the pelt of what seemed to be a large bear. It's head remained intact and it's teeth framed his forehead. The paws were draped over his shoulders, awful claws laid upon his breast.

He dropped something and I flinched. His eyes never left my face. As we faced each other, completely silent, the crumpled iron of the doorknob rolled away in a widely arching circle until it hit the leg of a table and stopped. Only my own breath sounds filled the space between us. I glanced at the window I had opened.

I could jump.

A soft creaking alerted me back to him and I saw him moving towards me slowly. "Stay back!" I yelled, brandishing my weapon as if it might somehow intimidate him.The five foot long stick, reduced to merely three at most by my own frantic efforts, was not even half his height. Still, I could stab him through the guts and make a break for the door.

"Easy, little one." The voice that came out of him was closer to the sound of carriage wheels against gravel than a man's baritone. Fine hairs along my body stood to attention. "No one needs to get hurt." He assured me.

"Come any closer and you'll have less life in you than that bear on your head!" I warned him in a grandiose lie. We both knew I could never take him, but maybe he would see the crazy look in my eye and fear me, just a little. To my credit, he did falter in his slow gait towards me. "Leave." I demanded, both hands wielding my stick.

Regarding me for a moment, he licked his lips. "If I leave," He began, holding up his palms to me. "My men will leave this city in ashes." He threatened.

"Tell them not to, then." I countered, eyes going wide for a moment, flashing at him, a daring gesture to let him know I was willing to call his every bluff.

It angered me when he chortled. I clenched my teeth and resisted the urge to swing my big pointy stick at him. "Once Orcs have scented ash on the wind, there is no stopping them." He told me. "You are what has kept my men from claiming what is rightfully ours."

Enraged, I bared my teeth and gave a muffled scream through them. "Go steal someone else's lands! Better yet, go and find your own!" I shrieked.

Suddenly, he seemed to lose all patience with me. The humored smile on his lips vanished and he grew large, impossibly so, until he was upon me in an instant. I stabbed at him as if I were holding a spear and felt the tip connect with his body, but it did not give beneath the weight of my blow. Instead, he pressed into it as he cornered me. In one swift movement his hand gripped me by the roots of my hair and the veil pinned into the curls, as the other yanked the cue from my hands and threw it out the open window.

Below, I could hear someone yelp as it struck them from the sky.

Horribly close, our faces only an inch apart, I could smell smoke and leather and pine on him. "These are my lands, wench!" Gone was the low voice he had led with, replaced by a horrifying growl that made my knees weak. My eyes moved from his own, so inhuman and cold, to his bared teeth and tusks, the dead eyes of the bear skin we wore. Only the hysterical thoughts that my death was upon me filled my mind as his fist tightened within my hair. I nearly wept outright from the pain and felt my body giving out in sheer exhaustion. Fearing for one's life was utterly draining, it would seem, and there was not much fire left within my dying spirit.

"Release me." I wept, an oddly calm confidence allowing me to sound less like I was pleading with him, but commanding him.

Steadily, with a calculated movement, he further twisted the hand that held me captive and pushed me against the wall. "I have had enough of irritating humans and your games." The words he spoke registered, but I didn't have time to process them, given my growing fear of either being thrown out the window like that unfortunate cue stick, or developing a hideous bald spot I'd suffer for the rest of my life, should I survive this encounter. He was sick of games? He should not have accepted a marriage proposal for a woman of nobility, then, for that was all I had been taught in my youth.

My hand snaked through the cloak I'd knotted about my waist and gripped a billiard ball. I would only have one shot at this. If I failed, he would probably kill me. Quickly, hopefully. Given what I'd read of Orcs, however, I would not be afforded such mercy. I didn't want to do this, I was a kind soul. A decent young lady of noteworthy reputation.

But I'd done worse things to better men.

The cue ball connected with his jaw and I was shocked to see his head snap to the side. However, he did not release his hold on me as I'd expected. Instead, with his head still to the side, his teeth clenching so tightly I heard his enamel grinding together, I saw one of his eyes find me through a fallen lock of coarse, black hair come loose from his braids. The sclera of his eyes were black, the irises copper, and the pupil quite small. As he looked to me, now, though, it dilated.

I gasped in shock and fear and raised my arm to strike again. He caught me mid-swing, fist wrapping so easily around my arm. An awful snarl set my legs and lower lip to trembling. In less light I would have entirely believed he was not a man, but the bear he wore, alive and enraged.

"I have had enough of this." He told me.

Dear lord, I was either stupid or mad from the adrenaline coursing through my veins. "That's unfortunate, because I could do this all night!" I struck him again with another of the cue balls, deftly retrieved as he was so focused on frightening me into submission. This time, I hit his throat.

Just as I'd hoped, he made a terrible sound and staggered backwards. The bulk of his body against the billiard table sent it across the hardwood several feet as he fell, clutching his throat and choking down strangled lungfuls of air. Something caught the light and my eyes paused in their frantic scan of the room. There, against his boot, a dagger had come free just a hair from it's hidden holster within his fur boot. Our eyes met and he glanced down at it before looking at me again.

I lunged for it in the same moment he did, still sounding as if he were gagging on his own windpipe. My hands reached the hilt first and gripped it tightly as he took hold of my wrists. Shrieking in outrage, I tore myself free of his grasp and saw black blood stain the blade. As he balled his hands into fists to quell the flow, I pointed my newly commandeered weapon at him. In my hands, it was more of a shortsword, and I was amazed at how secure and safe, yet utterly incompetent, I felt in that moment.

As I slowly moved forward, he leaned back and away from the tip of his own blade. It was not until his head met the thick oak leg of the billiard table that the tip pressed against the soft column of his throat, right where his pulse ought to be. I said nothing, and neither did he. For a long moment, I believe we simply waited for the other to end this entire ordeal. Could I even kill him? Did I have the heart? Did he deserve such an end? If I let him leave this room, he would go on to raid and pillage and rape and kill and...I would be here, safe. Father would move us into the city and away from the violence. Elinor might be allowed to come, along with scant few other servants.

Everyone else would die.

In a most frustrating turn of events, I began to cry. Not because I could not kill this monster, and not because of the fate I faced, but at the thought of having no control over my own destiny. No matter what I did, I would suffer in the end. Perhaps not as much as others, but for far longer.

My head and arm dropped at the same time. At my side, I gripped the hilt of the blade tightly enough that my flesh screamed for mercy. After a deep breath, and a silent prayer, I handed it back to him, hilt first. His eyes were the only sign of uncertainty, how they moved from my offerance of his own blade, to my face, where deep sorrow and resignation left me silently weeping. When he so slowly reached to take it back, our fingers brushed against each other, and I hated how human they felt.

The monster before me did not move to stand. I assumed he was contemplating his next move, and, given my behavior towards him, I would not blame him if he made me the first in a long string of mindless murders across this quiet hamlet. Surprisingly, he tucked the dagger back into his boot, all the while giving me a pointed look.

I collapsed. He didn't move, just watched me as I folded into myself and sat on the cold hardwood floors across from him in a pool of fine silk and lace. Removed from myself, I stared out the window at the setting sun behind the trees. The sky had been so blue when I'd walked down the stairs with father, and now it had melted into a pink and yellow ombre as the horizon was set ablaze by dying daylight.

With a groan, the Orc laid out on the floor beside me sat upright and cracked his jaw. A black tongue licked his lips and he sniffed. I stared at him, wondering what he would do now that I had surrendered. Instead, he raised his brows at me as if giving me a cue to speak. Standing slowly, I offered my hand to him. "Let us see if father has managed to beat the priest into submission." I said with a tight smile. He gazed up at me for a moment, and then he accepted my hand.