The Lady and the Orc by Finley Fenn

Author:Finley Fenn [Fenn, Finley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

19

The men were here.

Jule stared at this orc, this lying deceiving bastard, and found herself struck entirely speechless. The men were here. Already. Walking around above them, perhaps even fighting to get in, while Jule had been cooking dinner, and going to bed with Grimarr, and agreeing to forty entire days in this cursed mountain with him…

“Whose men,” she finally managed. “Astin’s?”

Grimarr’s mouth tightened, but he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “But Lord Norr is not with them.”

Of course he wasn’t — it would be a wonder if Astin had even emerged yet from whatever rock he’d crawled under — and Jule shook her head, tried to think. “And they’re new men? How many? What are they doing?”

Jule fully expected Grimarr to refuse to reply, or spew even more elusive orc bullshit, but he let out another heavy breath. “There are now more than fifty new men. They climb over our mountain, seeking a way in.”

Gods damn it. “And you haven’t killed them yet?” Jule demanded, shrill. “Isn’t that what you orcs do when men come to your mountain?”

She could see the distance hardening, slipping further over those eyes. “No,” he said curtly. “If I killed every man who walked upon our mountain, I should never stop fighting. For now, I wish to pay heed elsewhere.”

Elsewhere. He meant her, Jule realized — he’d spent the day with her, rather than fighting off the men on his mountain — and she felt her anger deflating, sinking into something flat and cold. “And you didn’t think you needed to tell me any of this?”

Grimarr’s eyes looked at her, through her. “No,” he said finally. “I did not think you would wish to know.”

“Well, I do!” Jule burst out, too loud again, but she didn’t care who heard, or what they thought. “If you expect me to give you forty days of my life, then I expect you to be honest with me. How the hell am I supposed to trust you with my health, my time, my entire existence, when you keep crucial information from me? When you think I wouldn’t care to know that my own husband has sent even more of his men to rescue me?!”

Something flared in Grimarr’s eyes, but it vanished just as quickly, leaving only that deadened flatness behind. “If this is truly what you wish,” he said, clipped, “then come. I meet soon with my scouts and battle-captains. You shall know all that I know.”

With that, he abruptly turned down the corridor again, leaving Jule to trail after him around countless twists and turns before reaching another unfamiliar room. This one large and open, with a square low table in the middle, and a small fire crackling at the opposite end.

“Not all my brothers know your human speech,” Grimarr said, as he strode toward the table, and dropped himself down to seated on the floor beside it. “If you wish to understand their words, you will ask me after. Here, you will not ask questions, lest you shame me before my brothers.

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