Trade Sister for Honor - 2. Chapter 2

The morning dawned hazy. The air felt damp, yet dust swirled around their feet as Karl and Mathilda walked toward the market square.

The orc delegation was already there. Three of them were guards; Karl recognized one as a shaman by his four-colored robes. Two more orcs sat in a cart resembling an open carriage, drawn by a massive swamp boar.

Besides Mathilda, there were only four other young women of the right age, a fact the elders must have informed the orcs of, for no sooner had the fifth and final one—the miller’s daughter—stepped onto the market square than the orcs stirred.

One of the two climbed out of the cart, and judging by how simply he was dressed and how submissively he behaved toward the other orc, whom he was now helping out, he was likely a servant. The orc being helped was presumably of high rank. And of advanced age, for what Karl had initially taken to be a white cap was actually his hair.

“Do you see the beads?” Mathilda whispered, reaching for Karl’s hand. “That green…”

Nodding, Karl squeezed her hand.

The green beads on the old orc’s dark green robe shimmered in the light; small stones, gems, and bones hung on strings from his belt and clinked softly. Not a shaman, so perhaps a priest?

The shaman exchanged muttered words with the priest, then stepped forward and surveyed those present, slowly and scrutinizingly, and his gaze lingered on Karl. “Are you the head of your family?” Skepticism lay in his rumbling tone, but also something Karl would call contempt.

“Yes, my lord.” Karl bowed his head deeply; he was the only male relative present. “The Yellow Cough took my grandparents and mother; the void beasts took my father and brother.”

One of the other orcs let out a grunt that sounded like displeasure.

“I see,” the shaman said slowly, and when Karl glanced up, he saw him nod. Then the shaman stepped to the other end of the loosely lined-up women and made a shooing gesture with his hand.

Once again, Karl squeezed his sister’s hand, then respectfully took two steps back. He watched tensely as the shaman paced back and forth several times in front of the women, lowering his head to chest level in front of two of them and listening intently before turning away with a grunt.

“You are hard to please,” the priest remarked, almost amused, but his voice was thin.

“The steppe is wandering,” the shaman replied, “and for the humans, the land is dying. The humans die with it. By the next tithe, the centaurs might be resting here.”

“Ah, that is possible.” The priest nodded and stamped his foot, as if to test the ground, but there still seemed to be a spark of amusement in his uncanny orange eyes. “But is this the natural course of things, or does the Old Mother wish to draw her precious children closer to her?”

The shaman sighed but did not answer; instead, he offered his arm to the priest and led him closer to the women.

Karl swallowed the lump in his throat with difficulty and interlaced his fingers before he nervously started fiddling with something and drew attention to himself.

Like the shaman before him, the priest scrutinized the women closely and then bowed his head.

The remark about the resonance popped back into Karl’s mind—did that have something to do with breathing or a heartbeat? For a moment, he actually considered asking one of the orcs about it, but dismissed the thought because he didn’t want to appear disrespectful.

Meanwhile, the priest had finished his examination and took a step back. His servant handed him a small pot, and he nodded in thanks, but then he paused.

“You see what I mean, don’t you?” The shaman tipped his head toward the waiting humans.

“I see it, and it saddens my heart,” the priest replied with a deep sigh.

A new lump formed in Karl’s throat—hearing that the land and the people were dying, that the orcs could sense it, was not pleasant—but his mouth was too dry, and his attempt to swallow nearly made him gag. The question of what would happen if none of the women were worthy of being a tithe bride swirled through his head.

Slowly, and this time without assistance, the priest stepped forward to Bianca, the daughter of the baker’s family. He dipped a finger into the pot and brushed it across Bianca’s forehead.

Her mother gasped and slapped her hands over her mouth, but out of the corner of his eye, Karl saw the joy on her face.

The priest padded on, stopping before Mathilda. The orange eyes seemed to glow, but the meaty lips, parted by gray tusks, held a small, friendly smile. He dipped his finger into the pot and brushed it across Mathilda’s forehead.

Karl stared, his body frozen. The pressure in his chest reminded him that he had to breathe.

The orcs had chosen Mathilda for the shortlist.

While the servant helped the old priest back into the cart, the shaman stepped forward again, nodding to Bianca and Mathilda. “We expect you at our camp tomorrow at noon to make a final selection.”

Mathilda nodded, the shaman turned away.

But the humans didn’t move until the small group of orcs had left the market square. Bianca’s mother whispered excitedly, and the old millswoman complained about the orcs’ bad taste. Other family members who had been waiting in the side streets came up.

Hesitantly, Karl approached Mathilda, who was watching the departing orcs; the white mark on her forehead looked strangely menacing.

For the rest of the day, Karl sat on the back porch and stared toward the orcs’ camp, except for the interruption in the afternoon when he went to Fred’s family’s house to return the pot. He was almost glad not to run into Fred, because in the chaos of his emotions he didn’t know what to say, but his mother, who already knew what had happened, pressed another pot of stew into Karl’s hands.

“Don’t pull such a face, boy,” she said, almost harshly. “They’ll treat her like an incarnation of their goddess, carry her on their hands. She’ll live in luxury we can’t even imagine here.”

Karl merely nodded silently in thanks and swallowed the question of what they should do if, upon closer inspection, the orcs rejected Mathilda after all.

Mathilda, for her part, was pacing around the house, as far as he could tell, and paused, almost horrified, when she saw him with the full pot. He could literally read her question—“How on earth are we ever going to repay them if I stay?”—right in her eyes.