She didn’t need to tell them twice. Arcturus hurried up toward the curve of the river, where fronds from a hanging tree drifted in the water. He tried to focus on the bend of the river, but could not help but listen to the sounds of the labor behind him.
“All right, Elaine, try to keep her calm,” he heard Alice say. “Rub her shoulders, there’s a good girl.”
“How do you know what you’re doing?” Elaine asked.
“I’ve helped deliver a few calves on our estate,” Alice replied. “If we’re lucky, orc labor will be as quick as theirs.”
The orc’s moans became louder. Somehow, the forest had gone completely quiet, but for the soft soughing of the breeze.
“Come on, push now,” Alice called out.
Still the orc moaned.
“You’ve done this before. Push!”
There was a single, drawn-out scream. And then, the coughing cry of a baby, ringing through the air.
“Arcturus, I need your dirk,” Alice called.
He ran back, blade drawn, to where the trio sat in the shallows. For a moment he stood there, confused as to why they needed his blade.
Then he saw the pink, twisted tube of the umbilical cord, and knew what he had to do. It was over in a single slice … and then he was staring into the face of an orc baby.
Its little face was crinkled as it wailed at the light of the world, and Alice held the child closer for Arcturus to see, for the mother was too weak to even lift her arms. It had a small patch of curling hair on its head, and tiny canines protruding from either side of its mouth.
But for all these details, there was one that stood out to Arcturus the most.
The orc was white. Even its hair was colorless, and its wide eyes were tinged a pink red. He held out a finger, and the baby reached out its hand, taking his finger with surprising force.
“What’s—” Arcturus began.
But a shout to his right interrupted him.
“Quickly, into the bushes,” Rotter hissed from upriver, sprinting toward them.
For a panic-stricken moment, Alice and Arcturus stared at each other. The orc was too heavy to move, and Edmund, Elaine and Rotter were already diving into the undergrowth. Sacharissa tugged at Arcturus’s wrist, her nostrils filled with a strange, fishy scent.
Then they were running, baby in tow, leaving the exhausted orc sitting in the shallows. What else could they do?
They were not a moment too soon. For within seconds of reaching the safety of the trees, a flotilla came around the bend, the likes of which Arcturus had never seen.
The scrawny creatures within the vessels were short, coming no higher than Arcturus’s knee, with bulbous eyes, floppy, webbed ears and long noses and fingers. They wore little more than ragged loincloths, and clutched barbed spears in their hands.
They were floating in what looked to Arcturus like large, upturned bowls of varying sizes. Every few seconds, one of the creatures would plunge deep into the water, then clamber back out, like seagulls diving for food. With each jump, they would emerge with silver fish, spitted on the end of their weapons.
“Gremlins,” Rotter whispered.
Even as Rotter spoke, the gremlins screeched at the sight of the orc, her body motionless in the shallows but for the loose braid of her hair drifting in the water.
“They hate orcs,” Rotter said, a grim look on his face. “The orcs’ve been enslaving ’em for centuries. These look like wild ’uns though.”
Indeed, the flotilla had stopped, the gremlins back-paddling with their tiny oars to keep the coracles in place against the currents.
“We have to do something,” Alice hissed. “They’re going to kill her.”
Yet, it did not seem that way to Arcturus. Though they held their spears pointed at the orc, the gremlins were maneuvering a much larger version of their vessels down the river toward her. What were they doing?
He watched on as the strange little creatures began to tug ropes from within their boats, swinging them around their heads to lasso the orc where she sat. She moaned as the ropes were tightened, much to the excitement of the gremlins, but still she remained immobile, unable to summon the strength to escape.
Soon she was festooned with cordage, her arms strapped tightly to her sides. It appeared they didn’t want to hurt her—but they did want to capture her.
Arcturus unslung his crossbow, unsure what to do. There were as many as a hundred gremlins crouched warily in their boats, their large eyes scanning the surroundings for danger. They were so small … perhaps he and his friends could take them.
“Don’t.” Rotter grasped his arm with an iron grip. “There are too many.”
“Are we supposed to just let them take her?” Arcturus asked. He had risked his life for her, mad though it had been.
“The baby’s safe,” Edmund whispered. “Maybe it’s better this way … there’s not much we could do for her anyway, the state she’s in. Looks like they want her alive.”
“Her baby,” Elaine gasped. “We can’t take her baby!”
Arcturus looked down at the pale child in Alice’s arms, where it stared back at him silently. He thanked the heavens that it had gone silent—Rotter was right. Fighting the gremlins would be suicide—there were too many of them.
“I have to give the baby to her,” Alice muttered, but Edmund gripped her knee, holding her down.
“Would you condemn it to a life of slavery too?” he asked. “Even if they don’t kill you on sight … that’s the fate that awaits it.”
“I…,” Alice began.
But it was too late. The female orc had been tipped into the wide vessel, sprawled among a bloody pile of silver fish.
Then, with strange, fluting cries that reminded Arcturus of tropical birds, the gremlins slipped away down the stream, their armada hurried along by the rowers within. There was no more fishing now, and the gremlins seemed to be cheering, stabbing their spears into the air.
For a moment Arcturus and the others stared after them, watching as the strange creatures disappeared around the bend. Then, as one, they turned to look at the newborn baby in their midst. It gurgled and glared back at them, jamming its fingers into its tusked mouth.
“Hellfire,” Edmund cursed. “What are we supposed to do now?”
CHAPTER
32
“THIS IS, BY FAR, the stupidest bloody thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Rotter growled, wringing his hands.
They were crouched on a small, shrub-covered hillock, looking downhill into the hollow of a wide valley. Above the canopy of the trees beneath them, they could see a thin stream of smoke, just visible before it dissipated into the clear blue sky. Elaine had sent Valens to spy, and now the group was sitting in a circle around the young noble, peering into the shard of scrying crystal that Alice had lent her.
Within, they could see from the beetle demon’s point of view as he flitted between trees, careful not to be seen by any of the wild animals that populated the jungle. The Mite was still a young demon, so it was no larger than a stag beetle and armed only with a weak, undeveloped stinger on its rear. Even a small bird of prey, or wildcat, would make an easy meal of him with one mouthful.
It had taken over ten minutes for Valens to reach his destination, and now he sat on the underside of a waxy leaf, staring down at the source of the flames. Elaine flipped the scrying crystal so that the view was right side up, and together they leaned in to catch their first glimpse of an orcish settlement.
What was almost immediately clear was that they were looking at no more than a small village, made up of wattle-and-daub huts with thatched roofing. In its center was a pit containing a fire, and surrounding this … were orcs.
Yet, these were not the orcs that Arcturus had seen in the jungle earlier—for there were barely any males in sight. Instead, the few orcs he could see were much older, with white hair and hunched, decrepit statures. The remaining orcs were females, dangling babies on their arms or chastising the toddlers that stumbled about the place.
“We’re in luck,” Alice murmured. “No warriors.”