Lost to the Orcs (Oyeon Orcs)

Chapter Two Where Am I?

CHAPTER TWO: WHERE AM I?

“Pht!” I gasp for breath, clutching my wounded chest.

“We’ve got a live one!” Someone shouts.

Oh, thank god! The paramedics are here! I cough and wince as the lancing pain jars me. I feel like I haven’t breathed in ages. Fuck this hurts. I squeeze my eyes and clutch my chest. If I didn’t know better, I’d feel like this were a slice and not a gunshot wound. Considering I just got shot, I think I’d know what that feels like. But this? This feels like a paper cut. Only larger.

Someone’s hand presses on my wound. But not where I’m pressing. Their weight causes me to hiss in more pain. “Fuck!”

A laugh rather grating on my nerves, “Must’ve not been a lady, eh?”

“I am a lady bud.” I grit. He’s cleaning my wound. From hip… to shoulder. What? I try to open my eyes only to see that I’m in the direct sunlight. Squinting, I look over at the man crouched over me. He’s wearing a coarse tan shirt and brown pants. Oddly enough, there’s leather, actual leather looping around his waist like a belt. It looks gaudy. And primitive . “Where are… Where’s the paramedics?”

“Para-what?” The man leans over and forcefully opens my eye. I flinch in the sun. How did I get outside? “Hallucinating most likely. That was a lot of blood you lost. You’re lucky you didn’t die.”

“I was shot.”

The man’s thick brows meet in confusion before he shakes his head. He stands shouting, “We’ll probably have to give her a few days! She seems confused! Saying odd things!” To me, he adds, “Let’s sit you up and bandage that wound.”

He takes my hand and sits me up. I hiss in pain. “Son of a bitch !”

He chuckles like last time. “Definitely not a lady.”

I glare at him. “What are you? From medieval times?”

He shrugs and murmurs an apology before I hear a loud tearing. A shocked gasp escapes me as the cold air touches my bare skin. Did he just—? I feel his fingers wrap a bandage around my torso. He adds a cloth that ties at my shoulder and back to cover the bandages and thankfully my breasts. Breasts that hadn’t had a bra attached. My tattered top in ruins on the ground. But it’s not my band shirt that I’d been wearing when I’d gotten shot. In fact, it’s not even a shirt. It’s the top of a dress.

I look at my legs wrapped in a skirt, my feet in moccasin like shoes. No socks. My fingers tentatively touch the bandage at my hip. The wound that glides up to my shoulder in an arc. Like I’d been sliced. “I was shot.” I murmur for what seems like the millionth time today. “I don’t even know anyone who owns a sword.” For this is definitely what I’d call a sword wound. No knife could make this unless I let them carve me up and I certainly did not!

The man gives me another strange look. He thinks I’ve hit my head but he can’t find any injuries. And his friends think I’m ‘touched in the head’, to put it politely. Stupid. If they wanted to be crude and blunt.

“You were lucky to survive.” He tells me again. “Your family probably died in this massacre.” Massacre it is. Dead bodies litter the ground. They look like travelers. An encampment. Wagons, tents. The like.

“My family has been dead.” It’s true. My parents died in a crash nearly 15 years ago. I’d gone the last six years of my childhood in a home because I’d had no other alternative.

“Then your husband. Whoever took care of you.”

“I’m not married.” He squints at me. Someone mutters something about the possibility of my being a slave. I just shake my head. Fear coursing through my veins. Where am I?

There are only men. They’re looking for any more living people. So far, it’s just me. The sole survivor of a massacre. Because isn’t that what this is? A massacre. Death. Everywhere. I’ve never even seen a dead body. My parents were cremated. Family friends saw to it all. Their ashes! I frantically pat my neck finding my mother’s locket still attached.

“You know, if you’re willing to give up that precious bauble, we’d be willing to give you a ride to the next town.” One of the men leered. The friends all look at my partly exposed top in avid interest. The sickness in their eyes fills my throat with bile.

I clutch the locket and shake my head. “No. No thank you.”

He grins. “Well, you’ll have to give up something in order to get a ride to the next town.” My skin blanches.

“Shut it, Micheal.” The medic, because that’s all I know to call him, grits through his teeth. “She’s obviously confused and disoriented. She doesn’t even remember the attack. We should take her to the next town anyways. She’s wounded.”

Micheal sneers at the medic. “So pure.” He spits and walks to his comrades.

“I’m sorry.” The man murmurs. “Honestly, the only reason I helped you was because my mother would have killed me if I hadn’t.” He shrugs in a poor facsimile to an apology. “My wife wouldn’t care but my mother would’ve found out from one of those idiots.” His thumb points at the men in their carriage. They’ve looted the dead and they’re ready to go. “Here.” He takes his shirt off and places it over my head. “I have an extra.”

“Thank you.” I put my arms through the arm holes and as I stand, I grab the torn remains of my top and use it as a belt around my skirts waist as he does the leather on his pants.

He shrugs and walks back to the men. I’m halfway to the carriage when one of the men stands in front of me. “Food and board costs sweet heart.”

I glare at him. “Then it looks like I won’t be eating. Sleeping under the stars isn’t any hardship.”

He takes a step forward, looming over me. The smell of alcohol on his breath. “Gets real cold at night. It’s also real dangerous. Never know when an Orc might come and snatch you. ”

That startles me into taking a step back. “An Orc?!” My tone is surprised and incredulous. What bed time bullshit is this?

He grins. “Oh yes. Big hulking beasts, covered in green skin. Tusks.” He uses his fingers to indicate the way they look. “They love the taste of blood. Even more so the taste of women.” His leering gaze makes me want to vomit all over his feet. Maybe I should. Might send him packing.

My lips twist in a bitter flat line. “I don’t know what nonsense you’re trying to get at me with, but I’m not afraid of you or any imaginary boogey man in the dark. Now back off before I hit you in the fucking dick.”

He laughs. As if my threat were a bluff. As if I couldn’t hurt him. Because I’m a woman. “It’s a long few days ride to town. You’ll find yourself whoring for food in no time.”

“If you’re so much in need of a body, why don’t you fuck one of your buddies. I bet they’re just as lonely.”

His face is filled with scandalized outrage. As if to say Him? Lay with another man??

Yeah, definitely medieval times bullshit is going on. I shake my head and walk around him. The medic sits me on the carriage in the spot he’d been sitting in and he starts walking next to the wooden contraption.