In the midst of trying to puzzle out what Araghramorn had to say, fires began to spring up in a dozen places. More than that, the flames were spreading fast.

  The orcs turned in every direction, their crude voices went up and contradictory questions and instructions went out from old and young alike, but the bravest among them snapped their weapons to the ready and shouted challenge to the anonymous cause of the rising heat.

  It was answered by an arrow which pierced the throat of an orc warrior.

  He fell in a spray of blood, his spear dropping with a thud from nerveless fingers that were reduced to the twitches of a body that did not yet know it was dead.

  A second arrow impacted the eye of another orc a half second later. The unfortunate female jackknifed, her back arching as she clawed at the shaft embedded in her skull before falling down as dead as the first. A third fell with one in his side which pierced the crude leather armor. He survived to add screams of pain, but the fourth who fell with an arrow through his shocked, open mouth, made no noise except for the thud where he fell.

  Chief Krorgan saw it unfold all within the span of a single moment. ‘Six arrows, she had the others in the air before the first one even struck… the Huntress!’ He realized, but his eyes saw the angle of the shot and instantly he knew the direction she must have been firing from. “There!” He said and leveled his spear beyond the dragon. By knowing where she was, he’d hoped to avoid her, but now? ‘So much for that?!’ The thought was full of a desperate rage, but also…doubt.

  An instant later he heard the powerful voice of the human woman. “Surrender, or die!”

  It was then that Araghramorn heard the cries of what could only have been young children. The cries of babes and infants, along with a handful of voices that were yet girls and boys but who were fast approaching their maturity. ‘It’s not a war party, this is a migrating tribe.’ Araghramorn had seen that sort of thing in the mountain range he once ruled. Dwarves or goblins driven out of their home range and in search of another had often needed to pass through his mountains, and tributed him gold and precious things in exchange for their lives along with safe passage and knowledge of unoccupied places where they might make new homes for themselves. They came with their entire families and whatever goods they could carry on their backs, and it seemed to him that something similar had now come to pass for this tribe of orcs.

  Chief Krorgan let out a war cry that was as much filled with desperation as with battle fury and bellowed, “Find her! Huntress is but one!” He raged, but Araghramorn saw his spear was shaking, and the dragon inhaled deeply, ready to reduce their numbers further…

  “No! Araghramorn, leave them to me!” She shouted from her concealment. “This is my job!”

  Three more arrows flew from another place, this time striking orcs in their legs and sending them toppling to the ground howling in pain as the brush stirred up, twigs broke and weapons thrust into every bush a person might hide within…

  Then the cries went up again, there were more howls of shock and pain.

  But now more arrows?

  “Surrender!” She shouted again. The noise of her movement could be heard this time, but it was followed only by more orcish howls of pain.

  Araghramorn’s vision was good, but with his body still recovering, movement was difficult, and even he could not pierce the veil of solid objects, his eyes were blocked by trees and bushes wherever he looked, but his hearing could catch what his eyes could not.

  The cries of orcs lost their strength of numbers and their tenor changed from desperate or brave, to more and more filled with shock and pain.

  “There are traps all over this part of the woods! Follow me to your deaths if you like! Or surrender!” Her clear voice was devoid of fear, but notably, it was also devoid of any kind of glee. It reminded him of the goblin servants he maintained in his mountain that treated their mining work as just a ‘chore’ to be done but otherwise gave them no pleasure to carry out.

  The smells of the orcs made it impossible to tell their numbers, and it was fair to say that they truly stank enough that he wondered how he didn’t smell them from his distant mountain. Their voices too, blended together in chaos as they rampaged in search of the Huntress. The flames however, continued to spread, creating walls that the orcs could not easily pass.

  ‘The flames are not coming toward me, though… why is that…?’ Araghramorn wondered, and while he tried to work out the answer…

  The last courage of the orcs died, and he watched the Aina drag the orc chief into the clearing, her sword glowed blue against his throat, her hand held his dark hair, keeping his head pulled back, the neck clearly exposed. “The frost…pain…” He gurgled and tried to move his throat from the tip. She did not heed his plea of pain, and his feet spasmed in a desperate dancing attempt at finding footing, leading only to them making a mix of thudding and dragging noises in the upturned dirt as he was marched bodily to where he had once stood making threats. Behind them trudged female orcs, children, and the wounded being dragged or carried by bigger males who had no weapons left to carry. Even some of those had wounds that bled from hands or arms, others hobbled, showing wounded feet.

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  Their eyes were downcast, children clung to their mothers and wept in fear, cries going out even louder when Aina’s foot struck behind the orc and her hand yanked hair, forcing him to fall flat on his back, his arms and legs spread out, and her sword tip found the spot just beneath his jaw. “Tend to your wounded.” Aina’s voice was calm, but cold, her narrow eyes leveled at the orcs, they looked over their shoulders at the rising flames as if worried that they might find them, only for her to snap, “The flames won’t enter here.”

  Chief Krorgan stared up at her, “Please. No more kill. We fight no more. Our home, ashes, our fields, a ruin. No place left for BrokeTooth tribe! No food left! No home left! No safe place left! No allies left!”

  Crude speech or no, Aina got the point. Intertribal conflict beyond the wall was said to be beyond brutal. They were not the first demihumans to cross over into human territory for that reason. The orc chief did not avert his gaze, she could see the desperate plea in his vibrant green eyes. The same hopelessness was there among the wounded as well as the females of their kind who were at their knees and trying to treat the injuries with shaking, fumbling green fingers. Looking at them closer, she could see they were all badly underfed, not to mention filthy. Their armor was shoddy and bore the marks of battle, including gaps that showed how little good it did the previous wearer.

  “Slaves. Make us slaves, as long as tribe eats. Take life of chief as payment. Mercy for tribe, Krorgan begs.” The chief’s voice might have once been a proud one, and Araghramorn watched with a detached kind of silent curiosity.

  Aina’s sword went into her sheath and she spat crudely on the ground beside the fallen chief. “If I wanted your life, I’d have taken it already, orc.” She pointed back the way the tribe had come. “Four days in that direction you should find a large rock with crude ochre paintings, do you know it?”

  The orc nodded, the breath he’d held began to ease, “Krorgan has this knowing.”

  “Turn northeast when facing the rock from this side of it. Two days from there you will find a lake at the foot of the mountain. The game and fishing are good. You can recover your strength there. On the far end of the lake you’ll find a path that will carry you through the mountains, it’s passable in the summer melts. There should be a tribe there, the StoneTooth. Tell them the Huntress said to repay my gift of mercy to you in my stead.” Aina’s instructions were met with dubious looks.

  She then reached around her neck and pulled from it a thin leather strip the base of which held a small stone tooth. She dropped it on the chest of the chief. “This was their word. If it is worth nothing, I pity you. But I have heard the hill tribes abide by life debts. Is this true?” She asked, and the orcs one and all bowed their heads. “As for your wounded…” She reached into her pouch and turned an eye toward Araghramorn, “The fires will die soon, I’ll have to get more herbs for you then, for now, these are worse off.”

  She then dropped those too on the chest of the fallen warchief. “Chew on these and pack them into the wounds. It will prevent disease and make healing easier. It will be slow going still, but you’ll make it. You should find some dead deer nearby here as well, you can linger long enough to butcher and eat those. This is my mercy to you.” Her voice became low and the mercy in her voice was gone when she said, “If I regret my mercy and find burned villages or dead humans, I will hunt you down to the last, until the blood of BrokeTooth is wiped from this world, even if I have to cross into the hill country to see it done.”

  ‘We will live…?’ Krorgan realized. There were half a dozen dead, not to mention the missing scout that had not come back. But on his chest lay the means of salvation for the tribe.

  He reached up to his mouth, opened it, wrapped a hand around his largest tooth, and with one firm, violent pull to one side, his oversized tooth was ripped from his jaw.

  “Life debt.” Krorgan said and rolling over to his stomach, he performed dogeza, laying the tooth at her feet, lowering his head to the ground with his hands beside it. “If tribe lives, your name will have knowing among all who know our faces.”

  Aina grunted. “Just finish treating your wounded and go. But do not leave the lake before the spring, and go nowhere but back into the mountains when you do. That will do.”

  She then stepped away, taking up the broken yellow tooth and shoving it into her pocket. Looking past the tribe and toward the plumes of smoke, it was clear that the fires were already diminishing, the once broad columns were diminished to mere tendrils no thicker than her arm, and there were no new ones rising.

  A handful of the more ambulatory orcs did as they were bade, sought the deer slain by Aina’s hand and brought them back to the remnants of the tribe. It was a quiet affair. The chief did not rise from his humbled posture, not until the last morsel was eaten, the last wound treated, and they were ready to go.

  Aina herself sat on a rock close by Araghramorn, her bow across her lap with an arrow in place ready to be nocked and fired at the first orc to betray the word of their chief. They met her eyes only infrequently, a hint of fear and awe on their faces, and when the last plume of smoke died, the chief rose to his feet and his tribe, what remained of it, fell in behind him, following the big orc into the security of the trees to vanish and, Aina thought, never for her to see them again.

  When they were gone, she said, “I’ll go get you some more herb. I gave the last of what I had to them.” Her voice was resigned, almost ‘tired’ when she got up to walk away.

  Then Araghramorn asked in a low, rumbling voice, “They were invaders of your lands. Why did you show them mercy?”

  Aina looked out of the corner of her eye at the dragon, but kept her eyes chiefly focused on the direction in which the orcs retreated.

  “Because I am cursed.” She replied, and walked away from the wounded dragon without giving him a chance to ask more.