Erinne wrapped her arms around her center. She was sitting in one of the few chairs in the room. It was wooden and uncomfortable, but she'd been far from comfortable for a long time now. Cold Hammer was standing across the tent, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared at her but he didn't speak. She didn't' know why. She'd been in here for several minutes now.
Maybe he was waiting for her tears to settle, maybe he was trying to think of the best way to answer her. She didn't know, but as he waited, Lohke entered. She heard him say to someone outside that they were not to be bothered and for someone to water her horse. Ghaug walked in with Lohke, as did Chigun.
As she saw Ghaug, minus his twin, her pain increased and she dared to speak first, lifting her chin, "I'm sorry about your brother."
He looked startled and then his eyes filled with tears immediately, "How did you know?"
She glanced to Cold Hammer and then said, "I spoke to the ancestors."
"Is that how you knew they were alive?" Lohke questioned.
Her head whipped towards him and she surprised herself with the amount of vehemence that she was able to spout at him, "Don't you dare ask me how I knew." She pushed to her feet. "You...you should have told me. And you..." she looked to Cold Hammer but when she saw the state he was in, she fell silent and sank back into her chair. "Yes." She finally answered Lohke's question.
"Did he say anything?" Ghaug asked her softly.
She gave him a sad smile, "He's proud of the way he died."
Cold Hammer spoke this time, his voice grave, "He died for Andol."
She faced him again, anguish tearing through her again. As she met his gaze, there was a darkness there that she'd never seen before. "What happened to our baby?" She whispered. "What happened to you?"
"Your humans took us."
She scowled, "That's not an answer." His words scalded her and she knew that he knew it. Your humans... this wasn't her fault. She didn't own the humans anymore than he owned the orcs.
"Cold Hammer." Lohke said sharply and he glared back at the chieftain. They stared at each other for a long moment before Lohke pointed at her, "She should know. Tell her right."
Cold Hammer curled his lips. She felt like the world had been rolled over onto it's back. Everything was upside down and shaken apart. Nothing was right and her patience was wearing thin. "Tell me!" She shouted abruptly and he flinched. The orc that never bowed down to anything and stood strong flinched at her shout. "Tell me what happened after you chased Andol into the woods. Tell me what happened while I died giving birth again! While I listened to them tell me they hadn't found you or Andol and that our baby was stillborn."
She used so much force she didn't know how her own head didn't explode. She was done with these games, she'd been broken so many times she didn't know how else to stand unless she used the anger to support her. She wanted truth and she wanted it now.
Cold Hammer's brow furrowed but he didn't move, didn't uncross his arms. He barely spoke up as he said, "Died?"
"We were dead, Cold Hammer, waiting on you! Khash saved our lives with his magic. If not for him I would have left you a widower. Instead you left me a widow even while you were still alive!" Her emotions twisted inside of her.
"Sheobulf," Lohke interrupted, "Cold Hammer, please, let's just start from the beginning."
She glared at Lohke and he frowned. "You left me there, too," she whispered. "You, who I call brother." She shook her head and he stepped back, bowing his as if he accepted her accusation as truth and refused to dispute it. "Ancestors, you all left me." She sank back into the chair and covered her face. "You were there when Lohke came to get me at Thunderfall, you were all there when I told him Cold Hammer and Andol were dead. Why would you let me live like this? Tell me about my son, dammit!"
"Don't blame him." Cold Hammer said, voice stoic.
She glared at him and again the anger inside her fizzled when she saw the state of him. Covered in fresh scars that he'd been unable to stop. Broken and shattered arm and hand. Blind eye. His body looked how her soul felt. "Who am I to blame then?" Her words were far less accusatory than she'd intended them.
"I told you. Humans." His lip curled but he he finally took a deep breath and sighed. "I never found Andol in the woods. It was well into the night when I realized I might not find him, not without help and certainly not without daylight. I waited until the morning and began searching again. That's when I found the river and those wretched humans found me."
She watched him and he watched her.
Continuing, he said, "Andol heard the fighting, heard me, and he came with Willow and Larken at his side."
"The pups found him?"
He nodded. "They found him. They were with him the whole night, keeping him warm. Larken came to my aid but Willow stayed beside Andol. He tried to join the fight, but the moment he did, the humans attacked him in return. I don't know how many I crushed, but then one of them got a bad blow on Willow. Once she went down, Andol was wide open with no protection and one of the men grabbed him. I had no choice but to surrender. Erinne, you have to believe there was nothing I could do. They said if I...they'd slit his throat if I didn't surrender." He stepped closer and she was shocked to find guilt in his words and face. "There was nothing I could do..."
His words indicated that whatever had happened next, he felt like he was at fault. "You surrendered?" The only time he'd ever surrendered was when he realized he'd killed her family, that he'd harmed the person he loved. She knew what it took to make Cold Hammer break, and it was those he loved.
When his parents died, he went crazy. In the time following that was when he became known as Cold Hammer. He became a callous, brutal warrior. Love was his weakness and his strength. Knowing he'd broken her the way he'd once been broken shattered him. She remembered walking to him that day in the woods when he was chained, waiting on her to pass judgement. He still thought she was crazy for sparing his life because he'd never spare anyone who hurt him.
Now?
Things were starting to make sense. When he broke, he fought. He killed until he killed the pain. Or at least he tried, but she knew pain like that didn't just go away. If he surrendered, Andol's life had been on the line. If he was broken like this...ancestors, where is my baby?
"I couldn't reach him. I was too far away and Larken went for them. That's when they got her. I told her to run. I thought, maybe, somehow, she could get us help if she survived. They held a knife to his throat and they said they wouldn't kill him if I did as they asked..." his chest shook with the next ragged breath he took. "I guess you could say they kept their word."
Ghaug's voice interjected, full of rage and disgust, "True, they didn't kill him. They just hurt him."
Tears filled her eyes as Cold Hammer gave Ghaug a sharp look and Erinne wiped them away and said, "We thought they dumped your bodies in the river. There were drag marks leading there."
"Oh they did." There was morbid sarcasm in his voice now. "And nearly drowned us before carting us off like livestock for the butcher." His use of the word butcher scared her.
He was right in front of her now, standing even though she was sitting in the chair still. She tipped her head back to look up at him. "Then what?" She was honestly scared to know. Apparently he was scared to answer because he turned to the side, refusing to meet her gaze.
She was just about to try and encourage him to continue when Lohke said, "After I left you at Thunderfall, I didn't leave the kingdom. I went to the woods, I tracked down the place where you thought he died."
"We all did," Ghaug added.
"It was hard, staying hidden in the heart of human territory, but the woods are thick. Many people fear the monster that walks there and I'm not talking about the one that Wren unleashed. I'm talking about Wren himself." He paused and studied Cold Hammer a moment before he said, "I wanted to find their bodies and bring them home, so we followed the river for a time, searching. It was several days before we stumbled upon a small river town, and while hiding in the trees, we heard a human bragging to some passersby about the orc he'd helped capture and his half-breed son."
Chigun said, "We ambushed him and took him to the woods. He told us Cold Hammer was sold as a slave to some people in the north. So we went north. And again, we found where he had been and were told he was sold to someone farther north."
Lohke continued, "When we finally found him, Andol wasn't with him. They sold him to someone else."
Erinne's heart broke in ways she didn't know was possible. She stared, not at Cold Hammer, but at Lohke, at the one being in this world who had understood what it meant to be a slave in the custody of a race that hated your own. To be a helpless child against them. Now he was telling her, that despite all their efforts to stop this sort of tragedy, that her very own son had been enslaved.
His eyes softened and shone with tears as he stared back at her, "I know, Sheobulf, I know."
"This was never supposed to happen again."
"I know."
She looked to Cold Hammer. He was stiff and silent, his expression grim. All the horrors of her childhood didn't compare to what she felt right now. She would live it all again and again to spare her son this pain. To spare her mate even.
None of them were ever going to be the same.
She wanted to scream.
"I had the Killerfrosts cover for my absence. They spread word that I was fighting in various battles to keep our people united and fighting strong, so I wouldn't lose my position as Great Chieftain for being absent." Lohke told her and she knew he was right. If they knew he was gone when he was most needed, some orc somewhere would have vied for the position. The fact that Lohke risked it at all to save his friends said everything about him. "It took us six weeks to find Cold Hammer."
"Six weeks?" She turned her head to take in his body again. The multitude of scars that hadn't been there before. They'd completely mutilated her mate over a period of six weeks? "What about Andol?" Her heart was in her throat. They'd said they weren't together when they found Cold Hammer. How long were they apart?
"We had to hide out and care for Cold Hammer. He was in a bad way when we found him. And he still curses me for it."
"You should have left me and went for Andol." Cold Hammer snapped. There was a hard edge to his tone.
Lohke looked contrite, "I could not leave you, my friend." She stared, waiting with her hands clutched around each other for the worst of it. How long had it taken them to find Andol? "It took three weeks before he could move well enough for us to leave the area. It took another three weeks to find Andol."
She crumbled, even in her chair, she collapsed and Cold Hammer was there, grabbing her, lifting her up until she was upright but she refused to hold herself up. It was impossible when part of your soul was being destroyed. The one thing she'd never expected in her life was to have her son treated the way she'd been treated. As a slave. She'd fought to prevent this.
"Three months." The time from her son's disappearance to them finding him... "You didn't find my son for three months?" She cried against Cold Hammer's arm as he held her up, but she was glaring at Lohke. "You should have went to him, you could have left someone behind to care for Cold Hammer."
"You could've let me die," Cold Hammer snarled at him.
"What did they do to him? Did you kill them?" She twisted in his arms to look up at him.
He met her gaze and for the first time he gave her an honest, sincere answer. "Every single one of them." His words reverberated through the tent like an icy mountain wind. It stole her breath and left nothing but cold and darkness inside her.
It was quiet, as if they could all tell that something in the air had changed and Erinne finally managed to get her feet under her and stand next to Cold Hammer. It took several minutes before Lohke chose to speak, "When we found Andol, it was at an estate, with human and elven slaves and a single dwarf slave."
Chigun cleared his throat, "They uh, collected different slaves. All of their humans and elves had...beauty. Wildly different features, but all beautiful. Their dwarf, also an astounding person."
"My son."
"Yes." Chigun nodded sadly. "From what we gathered, they liked their slaves perfect, their behavior to be perfect. They showed them off at parties."
Ghaug scoffed, "So we showed off our weapons and cut their damn heads off."
He was jumping to the next stage and Cold Hammer cut in to say, "They kept them in a sort of stables out back. It looked like the one Wren has at Thunderfall, but with better bars." Too many nights stuck in a hayfield barn didn't make Erinne grateful that her son's cage had been better kempt and she gave him a wry look. "We couldn't break the doors down without making a ruckus."
"So they knew you were there," she murmured.
Ghaug sniffled, "When they caught us, they came in with weapons, of course, and they had these dogs. If we'd had our direwolves, they would've ran away yelping, but it was just us. Each stable was locked and we had to break it, so while Ghorg and I fought off these dogs, Cold Hammer and Lohke were breaking into the stables. Turns out they kept prize horses, too."
"What happened?"
"The horses broke out of their stables, terrified. They came running through. Ghorg saw them coming..."
Cold Hammer cleared his throat, "I already had Andol out but Lohke turned back to the others locked inside. I was looking at him, I wasn't looking at Andol."
"He got scared when the horses did," Ghaug said, "Ghorg threw himself over Andol. They...trampled...him." He could barely speak the words. "But Andol was fine, he was fine." He covered his face and wept.
"He chose our son's life over his own." Cold Hammer's voice was full of emotion and a fresh wave of tears trickled down her face, hot on her flesh. She felt strangely cold in here.
She nodded and looked at Cold Hammer again. She'd wanted to know, but there was one thing left, none of this explained why he hadn't come back. "What happened after you found him? You brought him home?" She paused and considered not saying it, but she couldn't stop herself, "You left me and Anyse? You just came out here and started swinging your hammer and everything goes away, everything is perfect again, just like how you used to be?"
"It wasn't that simple."
"Then explain it to me." Her words were clipped now. She tried to hide her hurt but it wouldn't stay down. There was a three month gap they hadn't explained of her being alone, and she knew some of that time was spent here, fighting the war instead of returning to her.
He frowned deeply as he watched her and heaved out a long puff of air before he sat in an empty seat and she turned, following his movements, watching him. "Erinne," he shook his head, "you should sit."
She glanced at her vacant chair and back to him, "What?"
"Sit." His words grew forceful.
The concern creasing his brow made her reach for the chair, but she couldn't quite get her legs to budge. They felt cemented in place. "What did they do to him?" She knew this involved Andol, she knew it was bad by the look in his eye.
"Sit."
"Tell me." She couldn't make her legs move, clutching the top of the chair with white knuckled fists.
He pressed his lips together in a hard line at her refusal to sit, but he didn't know she couldn't, that she was so frozen in fear that it rooted her to the spot. "We haven't been home long, Erinne. We were deep in the north, it took almost two whole months to return No way in the Underworld was I keeping my son in human territory any longer than necessary. I haven't had the time to return for you."
"But you had the time to fight?" She lifted her eyes to his, still stuck in place, her heart crashing against her sternum. He grew somber at those words, falling silent. All this time she'd been advising Wren against Lohke and he hadn't even been here. He'd used tricks and rumors to make everyone, including his own orcs, believe that he was here, that he was fighting in various battles. The orcs of his nation had no idea he'd been gone.
And Cold Hammer. He and Andol had been here for what? Maybe a month at most. She studied him, the grief in his eyes, his slow movements. He hid it well, but he was in pain inside and out. He was still as the night, deliberating how to move forward with his delivery and his tongue pushed against the stub of his tusk and she noticed that his tusk ring for their union wasn't there. It'd most likely been stolen from him and that saddened her.
Then he finally came to a decision on how to proceed and spoke again, "I swear I was going to come for you and Anyse, I just...had to help Andol first."
"Help him?"
"I didn't know how to bring you home...when just mentioning your name...fuck!" He pushed to his feet. She leaned back, startled by his sudden outburst and he paced across the tent. His expression was strained. She didn't want him to stop now, she wanted to know, but now the look in his eyes froze her in place all the more.
Cold Hammer turned his back to her when he finally spoke, unable to look at her as he said, "He's terrified of you. They blamed it on you, okay? The fucking humans—when they tortured him, cut him up, broke his bones—they told him it was your fault. They told him mommy was an orc whore who'd caused this to happen to him, that mommy didn't want a monster like him and that's why she left him there to be beaten every day. They even made him start saying it out loud 'this is mommy's fault.' I haven't told you we were alive yet, or tried to write, or come for you and Anyse yet because our son is terrified of you and thinks you'll send him back to the humans to be tortured."
***Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading! There will be a new chapter posted every Monday! Stay tuned for more Rise of the Warrior of Everfen!***