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Brath of the Gorrath

Look at him.

The most dangerous orc on the border. The one who killed Tessa at the river. The one who broke Mahra's spine in open combat. The one the elders use to frighten young warriors into taking their training seriously. He walked out of the Gorge alone. He fought a rock troll with his bare fists and lived.

He is mine.

His cock has broken women. I need you to understand that. His last mate was Durga, an orc woman, bigger than any Amazon in my tribe, and he cracked her hipbone when he finished because his hand was on her hip and he squeezed. Others came before Durga. Orc women, Amazon captives. All of them left hurt. Orc mating is public. The warband watches. The chieftain has to perform, show his strength, and it is over fast and everybody saw and nobody could take what he gave. Nobody tamed him. Nobody slowed him down. Nobody made him hold still.

I am the size of his forearm. My hands barely close around his wrist. I bound him in paper vines and told him to hold still and he held still.

The other Amazons drag human men home from the villages. Soft men. Regular men. Five and a half feet, compliant, easy to pin. Cochitl came back with two once and the tribe cheered for a week. I captured a warchief. The warchief. I held him with my magic and my voice and the absolute conviction that I was in charge. I made the most dangerous orc alive shake under my hands and stay.

I am the mate of the warchief of the Gorrath. Me. Etzin. The runt who came back empty from three mate-hunts. The one they sent to clear trails. That one.

Cochitl can keep her two soft villagers.

He hates the jungle. Hates the heat, hates the wet, hates the way everything drips and clings and grows over him while he sleeps. He told me once that breathing here felt like drowning. I laughed. This is just air. This is how air is. He looked at me like I'd said something insane. He stopped complaining somewhere around the fourth night. I don't think he noticed.

He came looking for druidic magic. Ancient ruins, old power. His shamans told him it could be claimed through dominance. He lost his warband, his armor, and a fight with a troll, and instead of ruins he got me. A runt with a bone spear and shaking hands and magic I didn't know I had. The magic was coming out of me the whole time, healing him, growing the vines, calling a troll to guard us. He figured that out before I did. He stayed anyway.

The vines never held him. I know that now. I knew it then, somewhere I refused to look. He held a snapped vine together in the dark so I wouldn't notice. He could have left. He could have snapped every vine on his body and walked into the jungle and I would have stood there holding a bone spear and shaking. He didn't. He held the broken pieces together and let the runt play warrior.

He calls me little jaguar. I tell him I'm not little. He grins with the whole terrible face and I want to hit him and kiss him and I usually do both.

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Etzin of the Omazin

She is the smallest Amazon I have ever seen. Her arms are the width of my fingers. Her spear hand shakes. Her voice cracks on every command she gives and she patches it and keeps going and I have watched bigger warriors break under less.

She is mine.

My shamans sent me into the Itzince to find druidic magic. Ancient power, bound to the green and the rot. Mount the conduit, take the power. I lost my warband to a rock troll, took a wound that should have killed me, and bled out against a ceiba tree. The conduit my shamans described, the power that would save the Gorrath, was in a girl the Amazons threw away. She healed the wound that should have killed me. She called a rock troll to guard the grotto. She grew vines that covered me while I slept. Her magic built a nest around us and she had no idea. The most powerful druid in the Itzince, and she thinks she is good for clearing trails.

The Omazin did not deserve her. I say this with my full mouth and my full voice and I mean it the way I mean a kill.

They called her runt. They sent her to clear trails that were already clear because they needed her somewhere that was not underfoot. Her age-mates went to the breeding huts, came back sore and full of stories. Etzin came back with leech bites and bark on her calves and everybody knew why she was not there. Three mate-hunts. Three times she went to the human villages and came back empty. She is wrong-shaped for what they wanted and they made sure she knew it every day of her life.

Her magic came in druidic. Flowers instead of fists. The Amazons have no framework for that. No teacher, no tradition, no elder who could look at what she was and say: this is what you are, and it is good. She hated the best part of herself because they taught her to.

I am going to burn that lesson out of her if it takes the rest of my life.

She dragged me through the jungle by one ankle. I am three times her weight. Her nose bled and her arms burned and she did not stop. She tied me to a tree with vines that a sneeze would break and stood over me with a bone spear and told me I was her prisoner. I have fought rock trolls. I have led warbands. That girl standing over me shaking was the bravest thing I have seen.

The Omazin would call this treason. Harboring an orc. The law says I die on sight. Their law left no room for her to exist and then they punished her for not fitting inside it. They looked at this girl, this vine-witch who can call trolls and grow forests, and they handed her a blade and told her to chop brush.

I have cracked skulls. I have broken spines. I have killed Amazons and jaguars both. If the Omazin come for her, they will learn what the Gorrath do when something that belongs to us is threatened. I will not be gentle about it. Gentle is something I learned from her, and it is not for them. They had her for nineteen years and they made her believe she was nothing. I will not forgive that. I am an orc. We hold grudges the way we hold weapons: until they break something.

She put her hands on my chest and told me to hold still. Her hands were shaking. She did not stop.

Little jaguar. Small and vicious and shaking. She has no idea what she is.

I do.