By My Side ... (A Valentine's Day Story) (3 page)

She met his eyes and was
swallowed by the unbreakable will in them. He knew exactly what he
wanted and would go to whatever lengths he needed to achieve it. If
she agreed, if she gave herself in these negotiations, she would
lose any power over her own destiny, would lose the right to make
even the smallest decision, loose that right to him. It did not
matter, she had no choice. But there was one condition she had to
set:

"I will not harm another on
your order. Aside from this I will pledge you my obedience and full
cooperation to the extent I am physically and mentally able. And I
promise you truth. I promise not to lie."

There, she had made the
decision. Something lightened in her. She had set the wheels in
motion and now there was nothing she could do anymore. The
inevitability was strangely freeing. His eyes searched hers, bored
into her as if he could find what he was looking for in her very
soul. She held still under his gaze, let him search for whatever it
might be he wanted to see. He seemed to find it, for he nodded
slightly, more to himself.

"Absolute obedience." He
repeated. It was hard to read anything in that face, so similar and
still so alien from a human's. "And no lies. Remember that."

"Yes." No doubt remained in her
voice. She had made her choice. His hand dropped from her chin, the
cold of the night touching her skin where there had been only the
warm impression of his fingers. She shivered.

"Well then, I had better tell
my people to pack up." His words were almost cheerful and the
triumph in his eyes was near touchable. She worried her lower lip
between her teeth.

"Sir, I would ask the boon to
return to the court for an hour to make my goodbyes." Would he
trust her to stand by her word? It somehow mattered to her, not
only the chance to see her family one last time, but the knowledge
he did not question her honesty. The seconds passing until he
answered were almost painful.

"I do not doubt your honour."
The tense muscles of her neck loosened and she sighed in relief.
Then she saw the pity in his eyes and knew what he would say before
he continued:

"But you will not see them
again. You are mine and all links to them are broken."

Suppressing the sob rising in
her throat hurt.

Travel

The orcs were frightening in
their efficiency. Within an hour they were on their way, abandoning
the dark castle and leaving behind little evidence of their
intermittent residence there. As they made their way upwards along
the valley ground, Elena riding one of the small, sturdy horses of
the region, the lights of Innsbruck became nothing more than a
memory, a reminder of her past and those she loved. It took all her
resolution to follow the path she had chosen and not to turn the
horse and ride back home. Over the next few days sheer exhaustion
would drive even her bone-deep misery from her mind.

Orcs were night active, as was
the nature of many other supernatural races, and their bodies
seemed insensitive to the harsh conditions and the cold in every
respect. Even the children, of which there were fewer than Elena
had originally assumed, had little trouble keeping up with the
predominantly male contingent of orcs.

They travelled only at night
and the biting winter temperatures made the journey excruciating.
The deep snow proved to be the hardest challenge, turning each step
into a concentrated, strength-seeping effort. Elena had never been
as exhausted in her life as she was on the end of that first night
-- and in the following nights her weariness only increased.

A strange routine developed. At
night they travelled, whilst the days passed in an exhausted blur
devoted to recovering from the exertions of the night before. As
soon as the weak winter sun crested the horizon, their cavalcade
would find shelter, choosing caves and, on occasion, a mountain hut
standing empty for the winter months. Elena learnt that orcs were
less susceptible to the effect of the sun than vampires tended to
be -- but they nevertheless became sluggish, preferring to remain
at rest throughout the short daylight hours.

This susceptibility to sunlight
was the only weakness Elena ever saw in the orcs. It made her feel
a little better to find some form of vulnerability in her
travelling companions. At least her own human metabolism did not
force her into a stupor when the sun rose; though as exhausted as
she was, she often collapsed as soon as the cavalcade halted for
the day. She was often asleep long before the orcs had settled,
leaving them to deal with the realities of preparing shelter on a
mountain in winter with a quiet efficiency of long practice. Her
ability to wake fully before the rest of her travel companions
allowed Elena to preserve some of her own pride in the face of the
uncompromising strength and endurance of these people. Though it
also led to some uncomfortable moments.

On the first day she left the
little hut the women and children had sheltered in overnight long
before any of the orcs stirred for the night. Elena had been
careful not to disturb the adult males, which had bedded down under
the overhanging branches of tall fir trees and in hastily dug snow
hides, as she left camp. It had been easy, no one awake to hinder
her, no one questioning her actions. Even the sentries had been
positioned too far off, and were too concentrated on a threat from
outside, to bother with her.

The sun was high in the sky,
its light glittering off the snow crystals, in blinding intensity.
No new snow had fallen during the hours of the day and retracing
their steps was less strenuous than she had expected. The walk in
the winter sun helped her settle her mind and gave her much needed
time to sort through her muddled emotions, to reconcile what she
had expected from the orcs with what she was observing.

Few ErGer made it to adulthood,
none unbonded. It had always been a reality of her existence, her
death an eventuality, a probability rather than a slim possibility.
Elena had been taught, from an early age, to be cautious and wary
of other supernaturals. Again and again she had been made aware of
the brutality, the threat, the slow death, she could expect from
any of them, even from those who loved her. When she had come to
sacrifice herself to the orcs, she had not expected to survive the
first hour, let alone the first night. She had not thought they,
the orcs, the most vicious among the supernaturals, could resist
the lure of the ErGer's addictive nature. But they had -- and she
had no idea how, or why.

Snow crunched under her boots,
her small feet finding purchase on a path the much larger orcs had
trodden the night before. The air was cold, stinging on the exposed
skin of her face, but holding that quality of quiet life only found
in the high mountains. She breathed in that clarity, that quiet
eminence of natural solace in the shadow of these majestic massifs.
She had spent all her life in the foothills of the Alps, but only
truly felt them here, away from the town, away from civilisation. A
stray thought rose, its fanciful nature making her grin. Poetry was
not in her character, but she could not suppress the comparison
between the majestic, immutable nature of the mountains surrounding
her and the deep dignity, and threat, embodied by her travelling
companions.

Her thoughts had come to rest
on that comparison by the time she reached the little mountain farm
they had passed in the early hours that morning. Her smile
stretching broader as she imagined the faces of different orcs in
the shapes and lines of the cliffs surrounding her. She wasn't
certain the farmer would have been comfortable selling her milk and
cheese, let alone letting her leave again without that smile. Even
with it, he was reluctant to let a young woman out into the winter
day and she had to concoct an improbable tale of a brother and a
family emergency.

Still, it gave her a strange
sense of satisfaction to carry her heavy bundle back up the hill.
Her hand hurt from the rough fabric of the sack the farmer had
given her after she realised, with embarrassment, she had omitted
to bring anything to carry her bounty in but in her heart, she felt
good.

The going was harder on her way
back, her feet slipping more than once, her thigh muscles burning
from the exertion by the time she was halfway back to the camp, but
in her hand she held a contribution to their lives, to the success
of their travel. For the first time she had been able to do
something useful -- not just be something useful.

When the hut came into view,
Elena saw him, Reschkar, standing in the doorway, his eyes turned
towards her, towards the path down the mountain. He was fully
armed, a pack slung over his shoulder. She could almost feel the
alien gaze following her every move as she trudged towards him, saw
in her mind the yellow glitter of those predator eyes before the
waning distance between them let her meet them in reality. He took
no step towards her, remained leaning against the doorjamb. His
blank face gave no indication as to his thoughts.

Reschkar did not speak, not
even as she reached the flat, downtrodden earth before the little
hut, nor as she stepped up to the door. He simply looked at her,
expressionless. Until that moment, Elena would have said she had
surpassed fear about her fate, her future, had transcended
hesitance and uncertainty, to attain a quiet acceptance. In a way
she had resigned herself to being a pawn, a powerless doll kept for
reasons out of her control, years ago.

But looking at him, at the
monster he was, she realised all that equanimity, all that
resignation had been a lie, a lie of the worst sort -- a lie to
herself. She had not chosen to come to him because she had given
up. Rather the opposite, she had chosen to come to him because she
finally was ready to live, and if it was just for a fleeting
moment. Last night she had, for the first time in her life, made an
active choice. True, it might turn out that the only choice she had
made was to change the identity of her eventual killer, but that
did not diminish the power in the action. For that moment, the
moment of choice, she had been an independent, free agent.

And her action felt right, felt
good, even powerful. For the first time in years she felt as if she
could breathe, as if an iron band had been loosened around her
chest. Oh, that band was still there, still ready to be tightened
again, but now she could sense what it would mean to live without
it. She could sense what a life without fear might be. And then she
met those yellow eyes. She almost faltered.

In the clear mountain air, her
fingers tightening around a bag full of food she had acquired, its
symbolism poignant in her mind. She had been the one to find the
treat, her alone. Elena looked at him, imbuing her gaze with all
the challenge she did not dare put into words. It said: I am not
quite as useless as you thought -- back off.

He raised a pale eyebrow in
answer to the challenge, every inch the threat, the predator he
was. He was the monster from her childhood stories, the spectre
other predators feared. Seeing him, muscles clearly delineated
against pale skin dissected by a myriad of scars, human hands
tipped by wicked claws and eyes as cold as a snakes -- she was
unable to see him for anything but the brute he was.

The courts had used the orcs
for violence, torture and death for longer than anyone could
remember and this man, this orc, had been forged in the hellfire of
that treatment and intent. She could feel it, see it in the lines
of his muscular torso, the violence painted on that pale skin, the
hard edge of his jaw, the banked menace in his eyes. And to get
into the hut, to hand over her bounty, she would have to pass by
him, close enough to risk touching him. And he was making it more
than clear that he would not be moving out of her way.

She glared daggers at him,
hating the way her palms had grown wet, how her heartbeat picked up
and the muscles in her stomach tightening uncomfortably. She hated
most that he knew it, that he could sense it and that it amused
him, though not the slightest sign of that amusement was visible in
his face of body. Still, she could almost hear the quiet
laughter.

Ridicule had always been a sure
trigger for her. No matter how stupid, pride was her lasting sin.
Chin high, spine straight and with all the haughtiness she could
imbue her actions with, she stepped towards him.

"Excuse me, Sir."

Ice dripped from every
syllable, even from the polite salutation -- possibly in particular
from the polite salutation. Without giving him the satisfaction of
another moment's hesitation she pushed past him. Elena could feel
the heat of his naked torso through the layers of her coat and
dress. It burnt her and at the same time touched her skin with the
cold tendrils of a glacier's presence. Every hair on her body,
every inch of her skin, was aware of him.

A shiver raced along her spine,
impossible to suppress. Just as it was impossible not to look over
her shoulder, not to give into the primordial instincts screaming
in her mind to keep an eye on the threat behind her. His expression
remained forbidding, but his eyes were too knowing, too thoughtful,
containing a threat deeper than violence, a threat that could
devastate her: the threat of understanding.

Even as her fingers, clumsy
from the cold, opened the bag to share out the milk to the
children, Reschkar remained mute. There was no comment, no reaction
as she turned to hand the cheese to the women whose responsibility
seemed to lie with the storage, and distribution, of the
provisions. Just as he retained his silence during the efficient
breaking of camp, or as he appeared besides her to help her onto
the horse. But she felt his eyes on her, every minute, every second
of the evening and night.