Chapter 4

Becca

M aking it a fair distance from the keep, I circled it, then headed east, toward the edge of the orcs’ forest and my settlement.

I had to stop twice to make sure I stayed the course and moved in the right direction. Navigating at night in a forest filled with mists that drifted between the trees and over the ground wasn’t easy.

Taking a wrong step also carried the risk of losing the dry ground and ending up in a bog of mud with no bottom. A bog killed slowly, sucking its victims in until they drowned.

I kept my eyes down for another reason too. The gray patches of fog played with the dark shadows of the forest in the pale glow from the stars above, creating visions that might give me nightmares if I stared at them too closely.

Sometimes, when I looked at scary things directly, the magic disappeared. Instead of monsters with long, gnarly fingers, I saw tree branches. The ghostly shrouds turned into patches of cobwebs. And eerie eyes burning with menace became just glowing mushrooms growing in circles around rotting logs and tree stumps.

Other times, however, staring directly at the monsters only made them look more real. The darkness solidified, taking corporeal shapes that stalked me in the shadows.

I drew the knife from my boot, keeping it ready. A knife was probably useless against ghosts, but it gave me just enough confidence to not run into the woods screaming.

Rustling came from behind me. A soft crack of a twig. A splash of water under someone’s foot. Or a paw?

Icy needles of horror prickled my skin, raising the hair on the back of my neck. Gripping the knife tighter, I wondered whether I’d have a chance to strike if the creature behind me attacked.

The subtle sounds of the night forest blended and dissolved into each other. But a snap of a twig on a tree as someone passed by it behind me came loud and clear.

A shadow lurched my way from behind me, and I stepped aside, under the protection of the nearest tree trunk.

“Fuck!” the orc growled. Stumbling forward, he couldn’t stop the momentum with me out of his way and nearly fell. “Slippery wench.”

I jumped after him and stabbed the knife in his back. With orcs, I’d learned, it was best to strike when I had a chance instead of asking questions. Because one chance might be all I’d get.

The orc jerked. My blade scraped his shoulder blade, making only a shallow wound. He roared in pain and rage.

Another orc grabbed my arm from behind.

“This fly can sting,” he hissed.

I didn’t remember seeing these orcs back in the keep. Not that it mattered, even if I did. All orcs were the same—best only when they were tied and chained. Or killed.

Fear and desperation gave me strength. I twisted in his grip, leaping backwards to free my arm. Mud sloshed under my boot. The ground gave in. My foot sank, and I jerked it up. The bog released it with a loud smacking noise, only to claim my other foot instead.

“Get her, Irg!” the wounded orc roared. “Get the bitch.”

Trapped between the bog and the orcs, I searched for an escape in a panic. A half-rotten log lay to my right. Placing my free foot on the log, I put all my weight on it and pulled on the foot held by the bog. The log held, and the murderous mud released me.

I climbed onto the log, but my relief was short-lived. There was nowhere to run from here. The thick trunk of the fallen tree was barely above the mud surface. With my weight added to it, it was slowly sinking deeper.

Irg moved after me.

“Get back here before you drown, you stupid water rat. What a waste of a perfectly good pussy would that be.” He took a step closer—the step that proved too wide. His foot sank, the dark mud enclosing his giant boot. “Shit.”

“Irg?” The other orc lurched after him, but Irg stopped him by raising his hand.

“It’s a bog. Stay on the dry ground and toss me a rope. It’s sucking me in.”

“But I don’t have a rope,” the other orc muttered.

“Your belt, then? A tree branch? Anything.” Irg freed his foot and tried to step on my log. The rotten trunk collapsed on one end under his massive weight. “Urgh!” he groaned in frustration, landing in the mud with his knee.

I fell to all fours, clinging to my end of the trunk for dear life.

“Forget the pussy, Irg, and come back here,” his buddy suggested, unbuckling the belt from around his wide waist. “No wench is good enough to die over her, even as rare as a human one.”

“I’m trying to get out, you idiot.” Irg splashed and crawled in the mud on his hands and knees. The noise of his cursing and thrashing spread far and wide in the quiet of the night.

“Here, catch the belt.” The other orc tossed the end of his belt to Irg. It splashed in the mud, falling short from the spot where Irg struggled desperately to get free.

Through the commotion, a soft sound of bubbles popping came from behind me. I peered into the darkness. The only light in the night came from the stars, the glowing slime on the tree trunks around the bog, and an occasional insect flying over the deadly mud.

Wisps of silvery mist curled over the swamp. The fog parted with a puff of air coming from below. A bubble as big as a cauldron formed on the bog surface. It popped, and a slick pale head rose over the mist.

Thick mud rolled off the flat head shaped like a diamond, revealing pale snakeskin, a pair of glowing white eyes, and an open mouth filled with several rows of needle-like teeth.

“Bog hydra!” Irg’s friend yelled in horror. “Run!”

Irg roared, putting all his might into his next attempt to free himself. The bog had claimed both his legs past his knees already. As he jerked through his entire body, he lost his balance and fell forward.

The monster behind me unhinged its jaw, opening it wide enough to swallow me along with the remaining piece of the log.

I sprang to my feet, jumped onto Irg’s wide back, then made a frantic leap, spurred by terror, and reached the very edge of the swamp. My feet slipped in the mud. I fell forward, propping my hands on the ground—a much more solid ground than the mud under my feet.

Clawing at the grass, fallen branches, and tree roots, I pulled myself out of the mud.

Irg’s screams of horror died, followed by the snapping of bones under the monster’s teeth. The terrifying sounds sent me to my feet. I dashed behind the closest tree, collided with something big and dark, and crashed to the ground.

The orc who’d abandoned his buddy Irg to the bog hydra slammed on top of me and grabbed my hair.

“Not so fast, human. A bog hydra has lots of heads, and it likes to feed them all. I’d rather it eats you than me.”

Mud sloshed behind us. The bog smacked and splattered, releasing something thick and heavy—the creature came out after us.

“Let me go!” I screamed, blinded by panic. I’d dropped my knife somewhere, probably in the bog, and now had only my fists to defend myself. But the orc pressed on top of me so heavily, I couldn’t even kick. I tried to punch him, but he grabbed my wrist with his other hand.

“I’ll toss you to—” The last word stuck in his throat, muffled by a sudden groan of pain.

Animal growls sounded behind him. The orc's head jerked sideways, its side smashed in. Blood and gore exploded from his crushed skull. I turned my face away, but the warm blood splashed on my cheek, my hair, and my shoulder.

His body slacked on top of me. Shoving against him with all my might, I climbed backwards from under him.

The familiar river hound had her teeth sunk in the dead orc’s thigh. Her owner stood over her with a bloodied mace in his hands, the golden designs glimmering in his right tusk.

“Agor?”

“Get up!” He grabbed my arm and yanked me up to my feet. “Ata, let go of him.”

The dog unclenched her teeth, leaving a deep, ragged wound in the dead orc’s flesh.

I didn’t know whether to feel glad or concerned about the orc chief’s sudden appearance.

“You promised not to come after me,” I said.

“No. I promised not to send my men after you. And I didn’t. I came on my own, with only Ata to help me track you. It looks like we got here just in time.”

The pale, diamond shaped head of the hydra appeared from behind the tree. Supported on a long, thick neck, it stretched toward the dead body on the ground.

“Wait.” I creeped closer and grabbed the knife from the sheath strapped to the dead orc’s bicep. The heavy leather-wrapped handle of the weapon in my hand gave me an instant boost of reassurance.

“Stay back,” Agor warned me.

The hydra’s nightmarish mouth opened like a funnel full of teeth. Ata growled, backing away from the monster. I raised the heavy knife with both hands, but Agor grabbed my arm.

“Don’t aim for the head!” he shouted, dragging me away.

Another head showed up, rising on its long neck like a thick white snake. I leaped aside, but two more identical creatures blocked my way from behind.

“There's a whole nest of them here!” I moved my knife side to side, choosing a target.

I didn’t understand why Agor had stopped me earlier. Head or neck, what did it matter? It would’ve been one monster less to worry about had I decapitated one already.

Agor raised his mace.

“Not a nest,” he corrected me. “Just one hydra. Nine heads, one body.”

I cringed. “Truly a monster, then.”

The first head dragged Irg’s dead body from the swamp. Most of it was in its mouth already that stretched over his bulk like a pig stomach over stuffing. Another head got busy devouring the second orc’s corpse. Seven more heads swayed on their long necks around us, closing in.

Actions and commands flew through my brain, forming a battle plan.

Cut low, under the jaw.

Move fast.

Go for the necks.

Avoid the teeth.

“I’ll distract them,” Agor’s firm voice sounded before I could tell him what to do.

The hound growled, nipping at the necks that swayed around us like the pale ghosts of the surrounding tree trunks.

A head struck. I swung my knife, aiming at the snake’s forehead, right between its eyes.

“No!” Agor shoved at my arm, turning my deadly blow into a harmless scratch across the head’s opening mouth.

“Why did you do it?” I yelled. “Why did you stop me from killing it? Again?”

“Don’t kill the head. If you do, two more will grow in its stead.”

“What?” My mouth fell open.

Shit.

There goes my battle plan.

The head launched for me, but I made no move to stab it this time, leaping out of its way instead. The head hissed in disappointment at its prey getting away.

“What do we do, then?” I asked Agor.

For once, I had no plan, looking to someone else for directions.

“Ata and I will keep the heads busy.” He swung his mace left and right. The sharp spikes that studded the bulbous end of the mace nicked the creature’s skin, letting the moonlight-blue blood seep out, but didn’t cause more damage than that. “You get to it from behind. The heart is right where all the necks merge with the body. Stab it. More than once.”

I nodded, turning my back to his. Two heads moved on me, their wide-open mouths jostling each other out of the way. I ducked, slipping between their necks and behind the tree on the edge of the swamp.

The bog hydra’s body was at least nine times as thick as one of its necks and seemed long like a log. Most of its body remained submerged in the mud, however.

“I need it to move, Agor!” I screamed at the orc. “Get it out of the swamp more.”

One head whipped around at the sound of my voice. But the rest stuck with Agor and the dog, infuriated by them hitting and biting their necks.

As Agor moved farther away from the creature, it followed. Two webbed, clawed feet emerged from the mud, splashing over the hard ground as the hydra crawled up and out of the bog.

A head attacked me, sending me to jump backwards. I ducked down, then dragged the blade of the knife along its neck, careful not to cut too deep.

The head hissed and struck forward, its mouth stretching wide. I jumped from under it, its teeth ripping the tunic on my shoulder and grazing my skin.

I scrambled on top of the hydra’s slippery body the moment the head struck again. The wide-open, foul-smelling mouth descended on me like a giant mushroom, blocking the night. But I found the spot where the hydra’s necks met its body and stabbed.

“More than once,” Agor had said.

I raised the knife again, then sank it back into the ghostly white flesh. I stabbed again and again as the air inside the monster’s mouth was running out, leaving me unable to breathe.

Its jaws contracted around me. The teeth tore into my clothes and my skin. With no air to breathe and no light to see anything, I kept hitting the same spot again and again.

Suddenly, the toothy dome around me slackened, then was lifted off me. I gasped for air, raising my knife for another blow. My knees slipped in the milky-blue blood gushing from the hydra’s body. I lost my balance, falling backwards.

“I got you.” The orc’s burly arms caught me. “You can stop stabbing, now, my vicious little newt. It’s dead. You killed it.”