Roderick and Gorlana Pt. 02

When they reached her private tent and slipped inside however, she turned and stared him over, convincing herself of what she was about to do. She stepped forward pulling her bosom against him,

"Do you trust me? Do you serve me? ... are you mine?" she asked, letting herself feel the warmth of his chest against her and filling her nose with his sour musk.

He gave an almost confused look and then a cautious crooked smile, "I would be... But I will not be led along forever with empty words."

His blunt fingers pulled her ass forward to press her against him, and she grasped behind his shoulders, breathing faster with him. Trying to let that hint of attraction, that she had stifled amidst all the other less compelling feelings his scent gave her, win out and make her do this.

Though the scroll had nothing to do with Roderick, she pictured his dead body, frozen and decayed in the mountain pass, his soul passed forever from this world.

She shuddered, for an altogether different reason than he thought, and then did what she had been avoiding, but had implied so many times. What she knew she finally had to do.

She kissed him, and pulled him willingly and eagerly to her bed.

Their light leather clothes were tossed away quickly in growls of impatience. Their bodies, teased and denied in hints of subtle promises for weeks now, met in a naked rough embrace, as they fell together.

He held her against him, pulling almost aimlessly at any part of her he could grasp at to make his body press and dry-hump against her. His strength and determination the only methods of enticement he seemingly had to offer.

She overpowered him on to his back and stroked his hard blunt cock to a twitching fervour and he seemed to lose all ability to resist as his pungent precum leaked forth, lying back in grunting spasms as his body begged her. His confidence and boldness were given way to her controlling grasp of his member.

She lowered herself roughly on to him, moaning as he entered her. She fucked him on his back quickly heightening her pace to a hard slapping rhythm. His head lolled back and he drooled as his hands held on to her thighs, squeezing thoughtlessly.

She closed her eyes and tried to feel as much pleasure as she could, to fill herself with anything other than the emptiness that had been consuming her. She used his cock and grunted in efforts to give herself some type of simple purpose, even if it was only to satisfy her frustrations.

In two minutes she had him emptying himself inside her. He spun his head from side to side and barked in helpless mindless instinct, subdued by the pleasure she gifted to him.

After he came out of his stupor, some of his strength and previous arrogance finally returned. He commented that other Rechlinger women could make him cum much faster than that, but that she felt different in an interesting way. His somewhat derogatory words were belied by the desperate grip of his hands on her ass as his trembling cock gave a jolt of an aftershock.

His words seemed to pass meaninglessly through her despondent mind, until she remembered to make this encounter mean something.

"So you will be mine then? Follow with me together? No matter what?"

Traulch stared up at her and took a heavy breath in and groaned, then agreed, "Yes. My General."

She nodded in satisfaction and gifted him a final squeeze of her thighs, making his eyes roll back, then look up at her proudly again. "Even back to Orthanhall?"

"Yes... My Queen to be," he added, bracing for her reaction.

She did not rise in fury at him this time, but she could not meet his gaze for a moment.

"With my hoard. No matter what changes?" she asked him, looking into him intensely.

He smiled and nodded, but asked, "What has changed?"

She told him.

...

The trees started to thin in front of them to reveal the clearing before wooden walls that were already surprisingly close. Roderick and Korboq's conversation died out as they both realized something was off; that no orc's had met their scouting party this close to the orcish stronghold that lay directly in front of them.

Roderick slowed his mount even more as they approached the eerie silence of the hold. The wooden palisade's wide doors were closed, but not barricaded. As more and more of it became visible through the trees a feeling of wrongness grew and he looked to Korboq again to confirm his worry.

Roderick raised his hand and their party drew to a halt behind him. "Quiet. Something's wron-"

An arrow nicked off of the side of his helm and hit a tree behind him. In an instant everyone was moving off to the side spreading out and finding better cover, just as more arrows flew, one taking a horse in the haunches.

"Halt!" Roderick shouted, "We are-"

"No!" Korboq bit at him quickly, "Don't tell them who you are, they may not know yet."

Roderick peered out from the tree and tried to make out the faces looking out from behind the wooden wall. "Why would the Corforids attack us?"

"It's not them. They would never. Not in this way. Look at the arrow Lightbrew. It's not their design," Korb said, a look of pure hatred on his face now.

Roderick finally put it together, "Rechlingers?"

Korb nodded in disgust.

Roderick looked again and finally saw one of them show their face through the spiked ends of the log wall. He was a hairier, uglier version of a typical orc, with a slightly longer nose and ears, and a more brownish-grey complexion.

Korb stood up and bellowed. "Where is Corthong? Why do arrows fly from his hold without the honour of words, from those who skulk like children?!"

An orcish head was thrown over the wall and rolled to a stop halfway through the clearing between the wall and the trees, too rotten to tell the features of the face.

A scratchy hoarse voice, higher pitched than a usual orc's, but more menacing replied, "There! Do your business with him. Then fight us or flee!"

Korboq snarled and stood up appearing ready to rush forward in anger but Roderick reached out to stop him. "No! Whatever the hell happened here we don't want to get in the middle of it. If something's gone sideways we need to get back to the princess and the rest. Let them call us cowards if they want, you don't care about their respect, right?"

Korboq let out another low vicious grumble and begrudgingly nodded.

He shared a look and gestured at the other orcs in their small contingent and Roderick did the same to the humans. They silently led their horses away into the thicker forest to a few more flying arrows and growling jeers from behind the walls but thankfully the Rechlingers didn't pursue them.

"Any idea what the hell's going on?" Roderick asked Korboq finally when they were riding more comfortably on the forest trail.

Korboq took his time replying, "No. Other than that something must be very wrong. Malgora would never allow this. They must have turned on her. She was a fool to let those bastards back into the realm from the northern wastes to spread their honourless ways. Now she pays the price. Now we all do."

"Are there enough of them around to pose a real threat?"

"I don't know. All I can say in the queen's defence is that they were poised to attack, either Andralia or Orthalia, from the north, and she chose to let them join her."

"They were ignored too long for too many generations and they must have grown strong in secret." Another orc explained.

"Or someone helped them," Korb suggested.

Roderick was about to ask why he thought that when suddenly he recognized smoke coming from a mile in front of them, others saw it immediately as well and pointed and shouted.

Roderick called out, "Ride! Prepare to fight!" and spurred his horse ahead with the others already joining suit.

They emerged out of the trees on to the open hillside to screams, smoke and carnage. Roderick pulled up to see corpses both human and orc littering the ground, the princess' carriage toppled over and burning. He recognized the same grey-brown colouring of the Rechlingers and noted they were surprisingly somewhat shorter than their Orthalian cousins.

They made up for it in viciousness, he soon discovered. His horse toppled and he lurched in desperation skewering one of the two who had quickly leaped to attack him. One of his allied orcs saved him from being sliced through by charging in from the side. The Rechlingers fought like cornered cats, quickly and ruthlessly, having been caught already celebrating what had been a sure victory. The remaining survivors joined them, some turning around from running away, though not all.

Roderick paled as he saw three Rechlingers halfway up the hill who appeared to be dragging Princess Valessa in an elaborate ripped dress, screaming. They seemed to have had plans to take her alive, but when they saw Roderick's men revitalized and forming up below them, they lifted her up, barked out a vicious curse of some kind, and slit her throat.

Roderick was hit with a strange mix of horror and relief, when the instant they held her head up he realized the features weren't quite right. It was her double. Her decoy's head hung gruesomely off her neck, attached by less than half its natural flesh as they tossed the dead woman's body below them, and fled.

Roderick's men killed five more of them, surrounding them and spearing them, but not before losing three more of their own. He was disoriented and confused but finally realized that it was not just Rechlingers fighting them. Other more typical-appearing orcs were fighting alongside the Rechlingers as well. Both still fled eventually though. The green ones seeming to begrudge the retreat and one even being captured alive. The rest were gone.

Korboq spat in their direction, "Honourless cowards. They always flee when they're not assured of victory."

Roderick nodded, now realizing what had been odd about how quickly the battle had ended. "That's one difference between you and them that I'll be grateful for, today anyway."

He caught his gasping breath as they stumbled back down to the hill towards the burning carriage. "Do you think they simply wanted to kill the princess and retreat?"

"They surely wanted us all dead," Korboq muttered. "The question is why."

Roderick recognized the armour of a man lying not far from the carriage, being tended to by a bloody soldier, "Todrin!"

He rushed up to the lieutenant looking grimly at a massive bubbling wound through his midsection. Blood on the man's lips was drying with his gasping breath and his pale face seemed to only half-recognize Roderick.

"We did what you said," Todrin wheezed.

Roderick winced at the accusation in the dying man's voice.

"We sheathed our weapons. We made no defensive position. We tried to trust their honour. The fucking animals slaughtered us anyway!" Todrin gurgled and coughed as he lurched in anger.

Roderick's burning eyes glanced at Korboq who's mouth twisted in disgust and maybe shame as well. "They were Rechlingers Todrin. It's a different clan th-"

"What the hell do I care?! We should never have come here..."

"Valessa. The Princess, Todrin where is she?" Roderick asked.

Todrin's pale face eyed the orcs around him suspiciously but muttered, "Fled. Dressed like the other soldiers as usual. I don't know if she made it. We tried to keep it subtle, but we were nearly surrounded."

"We'll find her," Roderick tried to reassure him.

"Get her out of this Gods-forsaken pl..." Todrin's voice slowly faded and his eyes started looking glassy.

Roderick stood up and gritted his teeth leaving the man's body to finish it's death throes.

"General, we have one of them," a soldier called from a short distance away.

Roderick saw the orc staring aimlessly at the ground on which he knelt, bound by the hands and feet, severely wounded but not as bad as Todrin. He was not a Rechlinger and that seemed to make Korboq and the others regard him with a derisive pity.

"Is he talking?" Roderick asked as he walked up to them. "Why did you attack us?" he asked the orc. The green wounded orc simply stared forward.

"How could you let yourselves be led by those barbarians?" Korboq shouted more harshly. "I thought you fools sought to use them but they now you take your orders from THEM? They make you disgrace your honour and be led by them?!"

"We join with whoever we can! To survive! As our realm shatters around us! We ally with whoever will bolster our protection"

Korboq spat back, "Fool! Your Queen finally sees the need for peace. To preserve your land not to shatter it. Have the Rechlingers poisoned your mind so easily?"

"No. Those brutes left us no choice. We fight like the rest. Our lands are shattered until the clans rebuild them whole again, as it has been in times before."

Korboq's face suddenly paled.

"Korb?" Roderick looked between them, confused.

The tied-up orc's green scarred face gave a bitter laugh, "And you call ME a fool. 6 days already now the black flags have flown. Your human masters kept you skulking in the forest too far from the holds to see it."

There was an uncomfortable silence as the orcs all stared at the captive in shock.

Roderick finally spoke, feeling frustrated. "Korb. What does that mean? What is he saying? Have they all turned on their Queen?"

Korboq finally gulped and looked intensely at Roderick.

"No. The Queen is dead."

Roderick froze like the rest of them.

Korboq continued in a cold voice, "She is dead and the high chiefs have not agreed on a successor. So the black banner flies until it is settled by force. Each clan will need to choose a side, and there may be many sides, with no telling how long or how much bloodshed until one wins out."

"And we're caught surrounded by it, in the middle of the bloody country," Roderick muttered in disbelief looking off into the wilderness around them.

He needed to find Valessa, and then, somehow, a way out.

...

To be continued.