The Outcast (Summoner #4)(57)

“They hate orcs,” Rotter said, a grim look on his face. “The orcs’ve been enslaving ’em for centuries. These look like wild ’uns though.”

Indeed, the flotilla had stopped, the gremlins back-paddling with their tiny oars to keep the coracles in place against the currents.

“We have to do something,” Alice hissed. “They’re going to kill her.”

Yet, it did not seem that way to Arcturus. Though they held their spears pointed at the orc, the gremlins were maneuvering a much larger version of their vessels down the river toward her. What were they doing?

He watched on as the strange little creatures began to tug ropes from within their boats, swinging them around their heads to lasso the orc where she sat. She moaned as the ropes were tightened, much to the excitement of the gremlins, but still she remained immobile, unable to summon the strength to escape.

Soon she was festooned with cordage, her arms strapped tightly to her sides. It appeared they didn’t want to hurt her—but they did want to capture her.

Arcturus unslung his crossbow, unsure what to do. There were as many as a hundred gremlins crouched warily in their boats, their large eyes scanning the surroundings for danger. They were so small … perhaps he and his friends could take them.

“Don’t.” Rotter grasped his arm with an iron grip. “There are too many.”

“Are we supposed to just let them take her?” Arcturus asked. He had risked his life for her, mad though it had been.

“The baby’s safe,” Edmund whispered. “Maybe it’s better this way … there’s not much we could do for her anyway, the state she’s in. Looks like they want her alive.”

“Her baby,” Elaine gasped. “We can’t take her baby!”

Arcturus looked down at the pale child in Alice’s arms, where it stared back at him silently. He thanked the heavens that it had gone silent—Rotter was right. Fighting the gremlins would be suicide—there were too many of them.

“I have to give the baby to her,” Alice muttered, but Edmund gripped her knee, holding her down.

“Would you condemn it to a life of slavery too?” he asked. “Even if they don’t kill you on sight … that’s the fate that awaits it.”

“I…,” Alice began.

But it was too late. The female orc had been tipped into the wide vessel, sprawled among a bloody pile of silver fish.

Then, with strange, fluting cries that reminded Arcturus of tropical birds, the gremlins slipped away down the stream, their armada hurried along by the rowers within. There was no more fishing now, and the gremlins seemed to be cheering, stabbing their spears into the air.

For a moment Arcturus and the others stared after them, watching as the strange creatures disappeared around the bend. Then, as one, they turned to look at the newborn baby in their midst. It gurgled and glared back at them, jamming its fingers into its tusked mouth.

“Hellfire,” Edmund cursed. “What are we supposed to do now?”





CHAPTER

32

“THIS IS, BY FAR, the stupidest bloody thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Rotter growled, wringing his hands.

They were crouched on a small, shrub-covered hillock, looking downhill into the hollow of a wide valley. Above the canopy of the trees beneath them, they could see a thin stream of smoke, just visible before it dissipated into the clear blue sky. Elaine had sent Valens to spy, and now the group was sitting in a circle around the young noble, peering into the shard of scrying crystal that Alice had lent her.

Within, they could see from the beetle demon’s point of view as he flitted between trees, careful not to be seen by any of the wild animals that populated the jungle. The Mite was still a young demon, so it was no larger than a stag beetle and armed only with a weak, undeveloped stinger on its rear. Even a small bird of prey, or wildcat, would make an easy meal of him with one mouthful.

It had taken over ten minutes for Valens to reach his destination, and now he sat on the underside of a waxy leaf, staring down at the source of the flames. Elaine flipped the scrying crystal so that the view was right side up, and together they leaned in to catch their first glimpse of an orcish settlement.

What was almost immediately clear was that they were looking at no more than a small village, made up of wattle-and-daub huts with thatched roofing. In its center was a pit containing a fire, and surrounding this … were orcs.

Yet, these were not the orcs that Arcturus had seen in the jungle earlier—for there were barely any males in sight. Instead, the few orcs he could see were much older, with white hair and hunched, decrepit statures. The remaining orcs were females, dangling babies on their arms or chastising the toddlers that stumbled about the place.

“We’re in luck,” Alice murmured. “No warriors.”

“Any one of those females could rip your head clean off,” Rotter growled. “Just because the menfolk are out of town, so to speak, doesn’t mean anything about this is safe.”

“I think I know what happened to the men,” Arcturus said, thinking of the young captive orcs he had seen earlier that day. “I don’t think they’re coming back.”

“Well, I’m going down there wherever they are,” Alice said stubbornly, hefting the baby against her chest protectively. “We can’t take it with us and we can’t abandon it either. This is the only way.”