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1. Arrival at Zayna’s Crossing

This is the first part of the first part. This is an NC-17+ fantasy story about a woman who loses her husband mysteriously and begins a new life. The story is about the new life; but because it's fantasy, here's some context on the old life. "No archive warnings apply," for this part anyway.

The main character is Aurani, a 23-year old woman whose grandfather married an elf in a village up north.

In an archaic fantasy world, a civil war has broken out. Eila, a royal daughter, was pursued by brigands through a seaside fishing village. She tried to take shelter with a nearby blacksmith, but she was followed and the blacksmith's house attacked. The blacksmith's wife, Aurani (MC), escaped with Eila and hid in a sea cave. Only one of the brigands -- an orc -- noticed and followed them in. There was a magical explosion, collapsing part of the cave on top of them. In a moment of decision, the orc threw himself over Aurani and saved her life, although his arm was crushed. Unwilling to leave the orc to die (even if a thug), Aurani and Eila dragged him out of the sea cave before the tide rose.

Returning, Aurani found her house burnt down, the brigands gone and her husband missing -- only bloodstains and ash on the floor. With the orc unconscious from pain, the royal scion and the blacksmith's wife decided to go north to a city on an isthmus, Zayna's Crossing, where Aurani first travelled south and met her husband five years ago, and where he told her to go -- to an inn called the Golden Luin -- if there were ever any trouble.

Since consummating her marriage, she has always been able to sense her husband's life and closeness. That ended the same moment as the magical explosion.

[This is the first part of Episode 1, just setting up getting into the city and going to the Golden Luin.]

Episode 1. Arrival at Zayna’s Crossing.

1-1. The heavy-laden market wagon trundled to a halt before the open gates of Zayna’s Crossing. The carter assured his two women riding in among his goods there would be “no trouble with guards,” but the rules were changing quickly. Or perhaps there simply weren’t any rules now.

Aurani glanced over at Eila.

Eila, her eyes wide with nervousness, was pretending not to hang on every word of the curt exchange between the carter and the watchman. Aurani had not much interest: Zayna’s Crossing was a market town, and the market day was tomorrow. People had to eat. Carts had to come in. She and Eila would be fine. But Brujos – he was another matter...

Eila fidgeted with the fishtail braid in her long raven hair. It had taken an hour to convince Eila to put it in, and two days later the woman still wasn’t used to it. Then she smoothed out the unfamiliar, ripped grey skirt she wore.

The skirt was one of Aurani’s oldest – in fact, it was the bright green and blue elfin travelling skirt she had worn when she first arrived at Zayna’s Crossing five years ago, unmarried and eager to live, the whole world in front of her.

Aurani uncrossed her arms and put her hand down on the lid of the small cedar chest beside her. Inside were all her possessions, including a small purse of eleven silver coins. Inside also were Elia’s clothes, folded neatly, clean and flat, ready to be sold.

Eila’s eyes were still faintly lined with kohl, but all her other makeup was gone, or covered with the soot and grime of their escape. She looked as badly off as Aurani, as miserable and as grief-hearted.

“And you,” snapped the watchman. “No passengers. Only market carts come in at night.”

“W-we aren’t–” Eila started.

The watchman, a lanky red-haired human, shifted his lantern to his right hand, putting it in Eila’s face. This shut her up. He pushed back his cap to get a better look at Aurani. “You...? Where are you coming from?”

Aurani hadn’t paid any attention to the elaborate fictions Eila devised with the carter. “Sikella, away south,” she answered. It was the truth.

“Many elves in Sikella?”

Aurani brushed back the loose strand of her own black hair, hanging beside her cheek, and tucked it behind the acute curved point of her ear. “No, sir. Only myself, and my home was burnt.”

“How long?”

“Three days ago.”

“Husband a fisherman down there?”

“Blacksmith,” said Aurani. “A toolwright.”

“Husband know you’re here?”

“I…haven’t seen him since the fire.”

He scratched his chin with his leather glove, then with the lantern, gestured at the peasant braids in Eila’s hair, looped around her ears. “Your sister’s ears are flat.”

“Sister-in-law,” lied Aurani. It was the first she’d told, but it still didn’t match anything the carter said.

“Visiting for the new year.”

“Aye,” agreed the red-haired watchman, darkly. “And what a fucking start to it. Where are you headed?”

“The Golden Luin.”

“You’ve been through here before.” It wasn’t a question.

“My people come from Ballaila.”

“Ballaila. –!” The guard stopped himself from asking more, then changed tack. He quietened and started again. “You a soldier’s wife?”

“Never. A blacksmith’s.”

“Who was a soldier.”

He peered at her in the soft light of his lamp. He already knew. Aurani’s eyes were steady. She fought to keep any hint of recognition out of them.

“...Yes. Before I met him.”

Her admission decided him, apparently. “The new rules went in effect yesterday,” he glowered, turning back to the carter. Eila he ignored completely. His voice boomed loud enough for the other guards to hear him.

“No soldiers, no southerners, no refugees. Market passes only. Your names are noted. You come in this gate, you leave this gate by sunset tomorrow. Go back the Road you came up.”

Eila’s eyes were getting wider, and welling up with tears. Even in the low light, Aurani could see all the blood had drained out of her face.

“Don’t,” muttered the guard. “Just don’t come south again, not by this gate. Not now.”

He nodded at Aurani, and simply said: “The Golden Luin.” Then he turned his lamp away and headed back to his post.

The cart jolted forward as the carter led his pony toward the tall stone Southgate. Eila looked back and forth, afraid of the guard behind her and the unknown in front of her. Afraid of the tall, gleaming halberds in the hands of the guards – weapons which the last three days proved to her that they were not merely for display.

“What was that about?” asked Eila.

“I suppose he recognized me,” Aurani replied.

Following the inner road behind the wall, the cart turned west for a respectable distance, then – instead of continuing toward the agora, turned north and headed downhill into a wide alley. As the cart juddered on the bumpier cobblestones in the alley, a low groan came from the space between the two women on the bed of the cart.

When they came to a stop, Eila and the carter kept watch while Aurani pulled back the strewn ropes and crumpled blanket to reveal the supine figure of a bloodied, injured orc.

Aurani took his good left hand and pulled him up, while Eila helped steady his shoulders. Together they wrapped the blanket over his shoulders and sat him up against the back of the cart. Sitting on the bed of the cart, he was still taller than either Eila or Aurani sitting on its benches. Alive, barely.

The orc looked miserable and half-dead. If it had been Aurani alone in that sea cave, she would be dead, buried under the rubble and stone. It would have been her grave without him.

The orc hadn’t intended to save her life, or Eila’s, but he had. Now attuned to him with her faint elven life-sense, Aurani heard his heart’s slow, indomitable beating, even while his jaw hung slack.

Such sharp teeth he had. His tusks glinted in the flicker of the carter’s torch.

They should have left him, back there. She knew that Eila wanted to suggest it. Aurani had too. But his body was a mass of bruises, black blood crusting over open cuts and gashes, one eye swollen shut and his bad arm looking gangrenous. His chest was a patchwork of breen and purple bruises over his smoke grey flesh.

Slitting his throat might have been a mercy. Certainly more merciful than leaving him to drown when the tide filled the cave.

She could have done it. She had taken his nasty-looking knife, intending to do it. She could no longer hear her husband in her heart, and seething with grief, she wanted to.

But then she sensed his heartbeat, drumming slowly with life beside her in the darkness. Whatever he was, whatever he’d done, she was not a murderer. She couldn’t kill or leave him.

***

The orc’s name was Brujos. Aurani didn’t know how she knew. On the long cart-ride north to Zayna’s Crossing, she and Eila had hours to get to know each other, ask about each others’ old lives. But even tip-toeing around the names of loved ones and familiar places turned nerve-wracking.

Was her husband alive? Would he come here? Two days ago, she and Eila had fled with the few things she could carry – her husband’s cloak, his knife, and a silver key. But he himself was missing. She had grown so used to being able to sense him, no matter how near or far he was, that now that he was gone, it felt as though she had lost a limb. Like this orc, this Brujos, was about to do.

When conversation with Eila faltered, the unconscious orc was all Aurani could concentrate on to keep her mind off not knowing what happened to her husband. Apart from his features – his smoke grey skin, his height and the breadth of his shoulders, the jagged lower tusks on either side of his mouth, the razor-cut stubble on his head, and here and there old livid scars. She wanted to touch the points of his fangs with her finger, and feel the tips of his pointed ears, longer than hers and so unusual to see after living only around humans for so long.

She wanted to pinch open his eyelids. His eyes had been the last thing Aurani saw before everything went dark. Would they look dull now, to match his long sleep and sunken, grizzled cheeks? Or would the orc’s eyes have the same terrifying emerald glint, like glittering green fire in a ring?

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