Chapter 4

I carefully scrutinised everything around me. The girl seemed to be alone and not presenting a threat. Now taking care to walk as noisily as possible, I unhurriedly moved towards her. I hoped to indicate that I was approaching and had nothing to hide.

I stopped a couple of yards behind the fallen tree trunk. “Hello, are you all right? Can I help you?” I called out.

“No. Go away.”

I liked the sound of her voice. It was deeper than most girls, yet without being unfeminine. And she spoke Common, so at least we could understand each other. I walked around the end of the tree trunk and sat on the trunk a couple of yards distant from the girl. With the hood drawn down over her head, I still couldn’t see her face.

“Hi, I’m Eloyin. I come from a village to the South,” I said.

There was no major reaction from the girl but her sobbing quietened a little. I took that as an encouraging sign.

Using my experience of reading stories to the village youngsters, I told the girl the story of my life. I told her about all my humiliations and failures and how I’d ended up unmarried, careerless and mucking out pig pens. The girl’s sobbing stopped and I thought I heard her snigger a couple of times.

I risked shuffling closer to the girl until I was less than a yard away, then I explained my purpose in the forest that day, and Matra Glandira’s baffling instruction to think like a healer. I shuffled even closer to the girl, until I was less than a foot away.

“What are you doing?” she snarled.

“In my village, when someone is emotionally distressed, it’s customary to give them a hug. I thought that might comfort you.”

The girl whirled round and I felt something sharp pressing just below my ribs, but I didn’t look to see what it was because the girl’s hood had flipped up and I saw her face for the first time.

“You’re ... you’re an orc!” I stammered, on seeing the pig-like snout and the two vestigial tusks protruding half an inch upwards from just above her upper lip.

“And you’re a human so I should kill you,” she snarled.

I noticed her extremely pale skin, almost white with very little green at all. I wondered whether she was an albino so I checked her eyes: jet black. As I looked into them, I became transfixed. Their depth and warmth were completely unexpected and I lost myself in them.

While continuing to stare into her eyes, I admitted, “If you were listening, you’ll know that if you want to kill me, there’s little I’ll be able to do about it. But I will have my revenge. I’ll bleed all over you and it will be a nightmare to get my stains out of the dress you’re wearing.”

She snorted, then a giggle escaped an attempted stifle, then she broke down completely into a fit of laughter. She actually looked pretty when she wasn’t snarling.

The sharp object wasn’t pressing quite so hard so I risked looking down at it. A metal stiletto dagger protruded from her sleeve and was positioned so that an upward thrust would travel under my ribcage and into my heart. I decided those incredible jet black eyes were a much better sight.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Your eyes. They’re incredibly beautiful.”

“That’s the first time anyone’s ever said that about them.” The stiletto was pressing quite gently now.

I took my time before speaking again, letting the calm of the silence wash over us. “If you’re going to kill me, would you hurry up and get it over with. I’m feeling hungry and I’d like to eat my lunch.”