‘Alright, ready?’ Val asked Arzak.

  We were standing in a clearing not far off the traveller’s road, our new horses tied up to a tree at its far side. This morning, we’d left Kudd’s blacksmith hut after very little sleep, kept awake by the clamour of the blacksmith working on the arm contraption all night. But when he’d finished and presented it to Arzak, and when she’s strapped it on, it seemed like it had all been worth it. My orcish friend had tested it timidly at first, just stretching her fingers, moving her hand this way and that. But Kudd had encouraged her to show what the contraption could do. He picked up a bar of iron, and he threw it at her. When I say he threw it at her, I don’t mean gently and under-arm, but instead that he threw it as hard as he could at the orc’s face.

  Arzak’s hand had snapped up to grab it, and the weight of the iron bar looked like it hadn’t weighed on her at all. I watched as a tear rolled down the orc’s cheek, followed by a tender moment between her and Zoi, which had Lore and Kudd crying too.

  But catching an iron bar was one thing. Using her heavy swords effectively in battle was another thing entirely.

  And so we stood, Lore, Zoi, Corminar and I at the edge of the clearing by our horses, Val and Arzak in the centre. I checked my mana reserves once more, finding them still drained by having to feed mana into Arzak’s contraption, but they would recover. And, again, it was worth it, even if we’d have to top that mana up occasionally.

  The orc flexed her arm once more. ‘I ready,’ Arzak answered Val’s question.

  My wife nodded, then crouched lightly to place her fingertips on the ground. Her eyes and hands glowed green as she invoked her Witchcraft magicks, and we all listened out for sounds of the approaching enemies.

  The summoned wolves came promptly. All kinds of creatures had been drawn out of the darkness in the wake of Arit’s army, and wolves were no exception. Plenty were about. And as a result, Val might just have summoned too many.

  A dozen lupine faces emerged from the darkness of the trees.

  I reached for my knife, but Zoi shook her head. ‘She can take them,’ she said. ‘Watch.’

  Though I hesitated, I did lower my hand. Still, I wasn’t sure if it was true. Wolves were generally low-level enemies, yes, but there were many of them, and we still didn’t know how strong Arzak now was—this being the test of that. I identified a couple of the larger beasts, noting that they were shadow variants; they would have some control over light. I kept my hand off my blade, but I was still prepared to intervene if I had to.

  The twelve beastly faces trained themselves on Arzak, who stood in the light of the centre of the clearing. The orc stared back, and raised her swords. She gripped the blade that could absorb magicks in the hand supported by Kudd’s contraption.

  Lore leaned over to me. ‘You know what I’m thinking?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We should’ve thrown you a bachelor party.’

  I furrowed my brow, turned to him, and blinked. ‘Is now really the time?’

  Lore shrugged, and I’m pretty sure I heard him mumble under his breath, ‘I would’ve been your best man if you asked.’

  I shook my head to free myself of this strange tangent, and I turned back to Arzak just as the first wolf pounced. The orc shifted to one side, raising her supported arm to bring the sword up, slicing the beast along its underbelly as it drifted past her. Another wolf sprung forth in the meantime, and Arzak wasn’t able to shift aside before it hit her. But the orc had never been fast, or agile; that simply wasn’t her nature. Her strength didn’t lie in that, but in, well, strength.

  Arzak tensed as the second wolf hit her, then shoved it backward. As the creature rebounded, she caught it across the back with the sword on her off-hand—the arm that hadn’t been injured by the corruption.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Zoi said happily. ‘She can take them.’

  I wanted to correct the tiefling, to tell her that Arzak had only successfully taken down two of the enemies, and that there were ten remaining. But I held my tongue, and I too hoped for the best.

  Three wolves leapt at once. Arzak easily batted two of them away—her strength had not faded with her injury—and struck with her supported arm to attack the third. But this wolf was nimble, and the contraption on Arzak’s arm wasn’t perfect; it didn’t always move in the way that the orc would have wanted, its movement limited. So the orc missed with this attack, and the wolf managed to get its jaw around Arzak’s vulnerable inner leg.

  Out of instinct, I moved for my dagger, but Zoi moved to stop me. ‘She has this under control,’ she reiterated, but I could hear in her tone that she was no longer so sure.

  Arzak shifted strategy, instead kicking the creature with her other leg. She fell backward to the ground with this manoeuvre, but was successful in pushing the enemy back. As it pounced once more, Arzak raised her blade to meet it. Though sword met flesh, at the same time, more wolves decided their prey was now vulnerable enough to attack.

  ‘Ar—’ Val started.

  ‘I got!’ the orc declared, as she hopped back to her feet.

  And maybe she did. But I could see already that my orcish friend was going to have to change her fighting style. Even with Kudd’s genius contraption, Arzak would no longer be as agile with her dual blades as before. It was better she acknowledged that and adapted, rather than stubbornly trying to fight on as before, and potentially losing her life as a result. She still had her strength on her side, and she would need to lean in to that.

  I resisted the urge to shout out, to suggest this to my friend. Arzak was wiser than the others; she would work it out before long. And maybe it was better she discovered it from herself rather than having someone drop the truth on her. I looked to Zoi—was she ahead of me on this? Had she already realised what had needed to happen?

  Four wolves remained, though this included the two largest of the pack, the two shadow variants. Light bent around them some, obscuring their movements, giving Arzak less time to attack or defend. Even without her recent limitations, it would have been difficult to react in time to hit these enemies.

  Instead, the orc lowered her blades, and she let them come to her. As they pounced, I realised Arzak knew that she couldn’t hope to meet them with her blades; she wasn’t fast enough. But she was strong enough to let them bite, and then they would be well within reach. Jaws snapped at flesh, some hitting armour, some piercing cloth, and Arzak raised her blades to meet them all.

  * * *

  It was nice to ride into a town that wasn’t entirely deserted. A few homes were empty, sure, but there were still enough people around that someone noticed when we arrived. One of them, a young boy perhaps six or seven years old, looked at Arzak with bulged eyes. I thought at first that he was looking at the contraption on her arm, but then I realised it might be something else. My suspicions were confirmed when the boy ran the length of the town, before returning dragging his mother by the arm. And his mother wore the badge of Arzak’s network.

  ‘Good meet you,’ Arzak said when the woman looked up at her. Maybe so as to seem less intimidating, my orcish friend dismounted the horse, but it didn’t much help because even then, she was still towering over the informant.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  ‘You… you as well,’ the local woman stuttered. Her son looked up at her, and squeezed her hand reassuringly, as though it was something he’d done several times before.

  ‘You got news?’

  The woman nodded, but didn’t immediately speak. Her lips twitched as she tried to form the words, but couldn’t speak them.

  ‘Is OK,’ Arzak reassured her.

  After nodding, the informant was finally able to deliver her news. ‘There has been… been a small uprising. Near Westbara. Armadans fi…fighting against Goldmarch. Not many, only… only maybe a dozen people involved, but they set fire to the fort’s… grain supply.’

  Arzak looked over her shoulder, back at us. Though she said nothing, I could tell what she was thinking; the tides were turning. People really were starting to fight against the Players and their Goldmarch host.

  ‘Good,’ the orc said to the local woman. ‘Thank you. Any more?’

  ‘No. I mean… yes! The woman who led them, they say her name was Raelas, if that means any…anything to you?’

  I heard Val chuckle to herself, and under her breath she added, ‘Good for her.’ From her tone of voice, it sounded like she actually meant it.

  ‘It means,’ Arzak said, nodding. ‘Thank you. You been helpful. What about you? You need thing?’

  The informant looked taken aback, even going so far as to take a short step away from Arzak. ‘No, I… helping the cause is enough. Thank…you for the honour.’

  The orc smiled, then smiled down to the boy as well. She pulled a fresh badge from her pocket—the symbol of the informants—and handed it to the lad.

  He, too, broke out in a great big smile, and clutched the badge to his chest. ‘Thank—’

  ‘Alright!’ someone shouted from down the road. ‘I’m here! I’m bloody here. What do you want, Corminar? What gets me out of my debt?’

  I tried to resist the urge to grin, but I failed. Admittedly, I didn’t try that hard, and when I immediately relented to the urge, I allowed myself to grin as smugly as humanly possible. When the enchanter saw me—and the expression on my face—he turned his nose up.

  ‘Hello, Ted,’ Corminar said.

  The enchanter was looking better than the last time we’d seen him. He’d shaved recently, and wasn’t wearing the attire of the Cult of Ascendancy, so that was good, if not a particularly high bar. Still, his clothes and his slightly less manic expression suggested that maybe he’d had a bit more luck in the past few months. Maybe he’d even paid off that other debt we’d incurred for him by destroying his shop in Auricia. I could have asked, but ultimately decided that I didn’t care enough.

  ‘Yes, hello, elf. Let’s get straight down to business, though, yeah? Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it, and then I can be free of all of you forever.’ Ted’s gaze passed over the group, lingering only on me, who he snarled at.

  I waved faux-enthusiastically in response.

  ‘You think a blood debt is paid so easily?’ Corminar asked, his head held high, his tone deep and foreboding—lest Ted realise that a blood debt wasn’t a real thing. ‘No. You will provide us with enchantments, and not leave our sides until after our battle with the Council is complete.’

  Corminar glanced at me, and caught me shaking my head.

  ‘You will meet us again for our battle with the Council,’ Corminar corrected himself. ‘Rather than accompanying us on our journey.’

  ‘What’s the Council?’ Ted asked.

  ‘A large team of Players who seek to end our world,’ Zoi filled him in. She held her hand out towards the enchanter. ‘Hi, by the way, I’m—’

  ‘You want me to fight Players?’

  ‘I want you to pay your debt,’ Corminar replied. ‘But that will all be in good time. Arzak’s network will reach out when the time is right. For now, however, all we require are your enchantments.’

  Ted held the elf’s gaze for a moment, then slumped his shoulders. He pulled a small sachet from his belt. ‘Fine. You want enchantments? Have at it.’ Ted tossed the bag to Val.

  ‘Do all your enchantments have to be in sweet form?’ Val asked.

  The irritable enchanter shrugged. ‘It’s my signature.’

  ‘We have specific requests,’ Corminar said. ‘Not just any will do. In fact, we request the very same enchantments you once gave us in Auricia.’

  Ted raised his eyebrows. ‘You got another records office to break into?’

  I smiled. ‘Something like that.’