Too many sights and sounds crowded angrily around Vac Fadric’s head as he swam back up to consciousness. Everything that the young soldier could experience was just too… too. Several attempts that he had made to open his eyes wracked him with pain, forcing the miserable soldier to close his eyes to the bright kaleidoscopic glare of the too cruel sun.

  Rhoona be praised and damned, as his former barracks sergeant used to say. The man drank far too much, much too far into the early hours before dawn for any reasonably responsible military man. But he dropped little gold coins of wisdom occasionally, when he wasn’t making the enlisted men muck out stables, or scrub lichen from the landward walls of the barracks at Jibiril Keep.

  The sunlight was much too bright, the breeze that tickled and trapsed across his naked skin was much too cold. There was a rustling of leaves and tall grasses dancing in that frigid breeze that sounded like boulders starting their rumbling fall down the sides of not far enough off craggy cliff faces.

  There was a comfortable warmth that covered much of his nude body where it lay in the grass. It mostly covered his right side, creating a comforting warmth on one side of his body while leaving the left side bare to the bracing chill of errant breezes.

  A pleasingly soft, heavy… something …was draped across his bruised and injured form. From the sharp smells of pine tar and the acrid scent of apples gone to rot, he thought he may have been draped with boughs from random trees. But, for the most part, whatever lay across his aching body was warm, dry, and, aside from one or two hard edges, incredibly soft. Possibly a fine, tanned doe hide? He just didn’t know.

  It was vexing the young man that he couldn’t figure out what lay on him.

  Attempting to move his right arm to investigate what it was that shielded most of his body from that icy breeze, Vac Fadric found that his right hand was numb. The remainder of that arm was pinned and immobile beneath the warm mass. He began flexing his right hand, attempting to restart the flow of blood into the insensate fingers.

  That familiar feeling of nettles on his skin as he clenched and relaxed his hand over and over. His elbow and forearm were also incredibly sore, he hadn’t remembered injuring them, but here they were, clamoring for his attention now that he was once again awake.

  A soft voice spoke to Vac Fadric. “Shhhh, boy.”

  It was a kind voice. A mother’s voice, filled with love and all the warmth the world could hold. It caressed his ears with kindness, and there was a lilting nature to the accent in which it spoke. “Don’t fash yourself. You’ve been hurt. Badly. You need rest.”

  An attempt to answer made him cough, his throat dry and his voice a sandy-pebble filled mess. What started as Vac Fadric clearing his throat rolled rapidly into a succession of hacking coughs and garbled noises before the kind voice soothed him, as a gentle, dry pair of fingers caressed his hot forehead, brushing the tangled mass of his curly forelock from his brow.

  His detached thoughts chided him on letting his hair get that far out of trim, but the cap, and the helmet, he wore not only hid the extra locks from view, keeping the curls out of his line of sight, but the rampant, bushy mass also added extra padding to protect his delicate nugget from the chafing and bouncing of his helm.

  The touch was kind, and smoothed him back to a state of calm as several voices that sounded both right beside his ear, and at that same moment far, far away spoke in heavily accented Aulde.

  He was familiar with the language, but had yet to master it conversationally. The voices gabbled on, and as they spoke, he thought he could trace the conversation. They were talking with the voice of the kind woman who, from what he could tell, sat near his head as she tended to his injuries and calmed Vac Fadric’s racing, if frantic and jumbled mind.

  “...big man was set to feed us all.”

  “Oh, aye, good eatin’ on a gre’skully like this’un, if ye’ get to’im before they go green!” someone chimed in in a high voice.

  “Lot’s of good leather on one of those things. They don’t just wander through our woods on the daily, mum. Clothes and tents for the coming Winter…”

  “And his reggy, clothy clothes could be useful, too… shame to waste all’a that.”

  “He saved you, though.” The mother replied to that last plaintive call for his slaughter.

  “ACH! I know! The rude fucker…!”

  “Language, Boy!” An older voice chided. “Watch yer’sel before She Who Reigns! By all Those Above, don’t be a knothead, Kilan.” This voice was an older man. And he was just as grumpy as the one he reprimanded. “Ken, an’ keep yer footies on yer path! Or, I’ll tell yer ma.”

  “OH! You dafty!”

  “Watch it, Kilan!”

  “You’re all too loud for this early in the day.” A new voice broke in, and Vac Fadric came to two conclusions as that voice spoke. The first was that the warm, heavy blanket that had been laid across his body was a person; which did explain the poor coverage offered by the blanket, as well as the presence of the pair of ankles and feet that rested on his own ankles, which he had mistaken for parts of branches.

  …huh… I hadn’t noticed until now… having a body rest on top of me feels… and then the blush on his face further ignited into an inferno of embarrassment.

  An entire person had been placed over him as his wounds had been tended. That person was now speaking to the mother, and to the other, smaller voices around him as they shifted and moved from their place on his own body where they had apparently slept.

  And he was naked.

  All of the naked a person could be, he was.

  His eyes flew open once again with the shock of this realization as he attempted to sit up, hoping beyond reason that he was either actually clothed or that his clothing was at hand.

  Once again, the full spectrum of light available in the world assaulted his eyes painfully, driving his eyelids back down with what felt like the slamming of two heavy, ironbound doors.

  His fish-like wriggling and flopping about achieved nothing in regards to his attempt to sit up either, as arrows and fiery swords of agony dragged themselves through his abdomen.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Down, now.” the voice of the mother washed across his soul, calming his embarrassed panic and easing his tearing pain in equal measure. A pair of soft, firm fingertips slowly caressed his forehead again, and the pain in his stomach subsided as peaceful lethargy washed over Vac Fadric, making his muscles all release their tension. His body slumped back to the soft bed on which he had been sleeping.

  Thinking at first that he had been laying in the tall grass, he was mildly surprised to note that his head now rested on what had to be the lap of the woman who he had begun to think of as simple “Mother.”

  He could hear the footsteps of his “blanket” as they walked away from where he still lay in the dappled sunlit morning air. A young, feminine voice called back from the retreating footsteps, “Where have you little cretins put my clothes? I need to wash, and I expect my things returned to me when I get back from the stream.”

  Before his shame could fully destroy him, a light slap to his cheek brought his concentration back to the “Mother” on whose lap his blushing head now rested.

  “Ooh! He’s awake now!” A small voice shrilled. “Ee’et time to dine?”

  A raucous chant of “Dine!Dine!Dine!” started up from the host of tiny voices that surrounded Vac Fadric.

  “Hush, Bailem.” The mother chided, her manner calm in the way only someone with infinite patience can be. “Back up, all of you now. Give our young guest some room.”

  A band of cloth was draped over his eyes, and tenderly wrapped about his head.

  When Vac Fadric reached up to remove, or at least investigate the bandage, his hands were suddenly enfolded by those gentle fingers that had been caressing his forehead. The larger hands slowly eased his own much more rough, smaller, weaker hands back down to rest on his chest.

  His bare, naked chest. …remain calm… there has to be a reasonable explanation… for being naked, in a forest, surrounded by people… some of whom want to eat and skin me… yeah… his mind was, he noted, becoming more used to the situation, even as it listed all of the reasons to not treat it as in any way normal.

  “Be patient, Myrl.” The woman who now held his hands on his chest said, her voice soothing and warm in the cold morning breeze.

  “How do you…?” He tried to ask, but she interrupted him. The mother then handled him as if he were a very small child. Her hands let his hands go, and then they grabbed him by his upper arms, spun him around and sat Vac Fadric up, presumably facing her as she spoke. His mind reeled and veered around, his perspective spinning in the darkness imposed by the blindfold. The blindfold’s obscuring of his vision was absolute, and so he had to find his balance as though he were in the barracks as midnight on the darkest night of the year, when some oaf had blown out the lantern that allowed the young soldiers to find the door to the jakes in the dark. He sighed as the world slowly stopped sinning.

  “This particular how that I know is less important than that I know. And that is what you will have to be satisfied with. For now, at least. You have fallen into a great well of trouble here. The Hearainan have started something that will not end well for them. They have allowed themselves to come under the sway of leaders who would use their fears and prejudices to drive them towards war with both your people and the Clans of the Luk’Fai anLa.”

  Vac Fadric must have raised an eyebrow at the use of the formal term the Orc tribes used for themselves and their lands because the woman paused speaking. She must have noted something in his body language that tipped her off to his surprise at the term.

  “Would you have me call these tribes ‘orcs?’ Orc is such a crude word. You could do much better than that, especially when talking about your neighbors, Myrl.” There was a smile in her words that his blindfold kept him from seeing, but he knew it was there. He could hear it in her amazing, mesmerizing voice.

  Lord Ashe, he knew, would have called her voice “Dulcet.” His stern mentor would also approve of this woman’s brusk, commanding way of speaking. He decided a new tack might be called for here.

  “My lady,” he began. “My apologies, you have the advantage of me. You know my name, and I suspect you know more than that. But I know nothing of you except that you give me comfort, and I suspect you have patched and bandaged my wounds. I am guessing you have kept the…” He paused now, not certain how to name the viscous little men who had tried to kill him as he hung in the tree.

  “Let us call them ‘little hunters’ for now.” She said.

  “...little hunters…” he agreed uncertainly.

  “Yes.” There was that smile he heard in her voice again. It was alarmingly charming.

  “The Little Hunters,” he continued. “You kept them from …er… poaching… me.” Vac Fadric felt unsettled, equating himself to a deer or rabbit taken from the King’s Lands. But, it made as much sense as any other term he might think to use. “And then you bound my wounds, and kept me alive. I thank you.” He gave a slight bow to her from his seated position.

  “I am afraid to ask,” he started.

  “Oh, ask away, my young prince! Ask it!” She then laughed, and it was a deep, rich laugh that spoke of joy and fellowship, rather than the creepy kind of resonant laughter that usually spoke of enforced debts and obligations, and possibly dark allies, populated with men with crooked faces named “Sid” or “Tavi.”

  “Please, don’t call me a prince. My uncle…”

  “You uncle, for all of his reach, is not here. In fact, no one who is even a member of your race is closer than twenty lengths from where you now sit.”

  He sat with that for a few moments. This woman knew all of his life’s details and secrets from what he could tell. And he knew nothing at all of her. And the measurement she mentioned, Lengths, was not commonly used in Rhiada. A Length was 2000 Strides as the Hamurians, Velspeans, Selmattii, and all of the other peoples of the Faruan continent far to the East measured such things. Miles and Leagues were more common here on the Culdandracha continent.

  “What might I call you, Lady? I would know whose debt I have incurred. I owe you, and we both know it.” one hand drifted to his stomach where his midsection was heavily wrapped in bandages. “What price would you ask of me, in return for my life?” His voice was smaller than he wanted it to be, but Myrl Vac Fadric, Prince of Rhiada, living in a state of exile as his Aunt and her husband sat on his murdered parents’ thrones, did not know how exactly to ask. And that uncertainty rankled his ego more than he wanted to admit. But his way in which his voice came out in such a meek way bludgeoned him with the fact.

  “Oh, so formal!” She chided. “But, what would I expect from a prince of the Kingdom? You may call me…” and she paused then, as if thinking. “Call me Ghrian.” She said her name in the heavily accented way a native speaker of Aulde would say it: H’REEan. He thought it meant bright, or shiny. Sunny?

  “Myrl, my request is simple!” she replied. “You have saved Rabda, so I would count your debt fully repaid if you would see her back to her people. I have secured two horses for you, and I and my friends, these Little Hunters, have brought you as close to her people’s lands as we could without leaving the forests.”

  “Rabda?” he asked, tongue stumbling over the name.

  “The young Luk’Fai anLa woman, her name is Radba.” Her rich, sunny voice rolled the pronunciation of the name through the morning air, making it sound like Ravva.

  “Rah-va…” he tried.

  “No, Rabda.”

  “Raaaaahvah…”

  “Green sun before a storm, Myrl!” She sounded exasperated. “The long legged naked young woman who was just laying on you! I thought humans were better at keeping track of such things!”

  “I…uh…” He had no idea what to say to this revelation. He had suspicions. But to hear it spoken out loud by Ghrian like that, well… his blush had suddenly returned with a bag of grievances , a bottle of rum, and ready to fight whoever it found.

  “For now, rest.” Ghrian said. And placed a warm hand on his brow. He was suddenly exhausted. And felt himself spiraling back down to the soft grass on which he had woken not to oolong ago. “You can heal a little more before we send you back out into the world. We will gather another horse, and some food for you two to take on your journey. It won't be long now.”

  He felt rather than heard the steps of two normal sized people, and a veritable crowd of much smaller people, walking about the little clearing as he was forced to drift back into the land behind his eyelids.