****Author's note****

I'm sharing this chapter so soon after the last one because I have a question for my readers (and I don't believe there is any other way to communicate with readers other than posting? Correct me if I am wrong!)

So, my question! Do you prefer that I post chapters as soon as I have finished writing them, or do you prefer a set schedule like once a week, regardless of how many chapters I have written/not yet posted?

Also, I've sneakily added a little something to chapter 2! I invite you to check it out (in the author comments at the bottom of the chapter) ;)

33

The sun lifted in the murky, smog-filled sky until it reached its zenith behind a particularly dark plume of smoke. The shadow cast from its heights fell upon the river side, cooling the water's surface to the touch. Alaesia held exceptionally still, crouched among the reeds and grasses lining the banks of the river. The current lapped at her sides, under the surface of which she held her shortsword at the ready. The pressure flowing past her, helped steady her otherwise shaking hands.

"I swears I caught a whiff o' tark blood," a hoarse voice hissed from just a stone's throw away. "Better to find even a corpse than head back empty handed. Keep searching."

Just beyond the curtain of vegetation, a handful of orcs were scouring the area, trying to sniff out the source of the human scent they had caught on the downwind. Their superhuman senses were sharp and accurate. The faintest sounds, a shift here, a breath there, lured the hunting orcs into an arc, as they worked to triangulate the position of their quarry.

When she had arrived at the river, Alaesia had attempted to scout the surrounding area, to ensure that there were no slave ships in sight. So when she heard the racous approach of orcs from behind her, she had been taken by surprise, and could only scamper deeper into the water she had just started to wade into. Now, they undoubtedly had caught her scent. It was only a matter of time before they would find her hiding place.

"I ain't sharin' if I finds it…" one orc muttered under his breath as he inched closer.

Alaesia's heart began to race. Her body tensed and hands began to numb. Just as her green eyes met the orc's yellow ones, a vivid spark of panic surged within her. Immediately her mind was thrown back to Vezhir's face looming over her.

In her alarm, she lunged, completely throwing stealth to the wind, thrusting her blade from under the water and up into the orc's chin. As she withdrew the blade, a gaping hole remained, slit along his throat. The orc let out an awful, gurgling cry as inky blood poured from the wound. The last thing he saw before his vision went black was a human's gaze, but more feral, like a wounded animal. His hands mindlessly grabbed at Alaesia's bony shoulders, before his body slumped, falling back into the current.

Alaesia tried to slip back into the grasses where she might be able to hide, but she had made a critical mistake. The riverbank was littered with broad stones that formed the majority of the shoreline, but in lunging forward from her perch upon one, she had stepped from the stable foundation and into the muck. Her shackle-weighted feet were sunk into a mud slick under the water, preventing any movement, one way or another.

"OVER THERE! What yer got, Tuka?!" The commotion had done its damage. The other orcs all turned in the direction of their comrade's dying cry. The orcs, three more in total, began to converge, now spotting the human woman where she stood, half submerged and trapped.

"S-stay back!" Alaesia tried to muster her voice as their eyes all fell upon her. The second orc to reach her, very nearly avoided the fate of the first, as she tried to strike him with her sword.

He dodged backwards, just out of reach, and chuckled, "Ooh, what a feisty pinkskin I've found… Caught Tuka in the balls I bet!" The second orc glanced downriver, observing the bobbing body of the first orc being carried away by the current. He tossed his head over his shoulder casually, calling back at another orc, with a hint of amusement in his voice, "Ey, Silgak, ya oughtta be careful, 'round this lovely sharlob. Elseways ya might meet the same fate as yer misfortunate blood brother!"

"The blazes you on about? Where's Tuka?" The third orc rushed forward to spy the corpse of his blood brother as it disappeared into a swirling rapid near a large rock. "TUKA!" He snarled and shoved at the second orc, who planted himself firmly between Alaesia and the angered orc. He roared at the second orc, trying to claw around him to reach the human just outside of his grasp, "Piss outta the way, Zathra! This skeeving wench went an' slaughtered Tuka! She's mine! Blood for blood! I'm gonna rip 'er bloody head off!"

Zathra restrained the smaller Silgak with little effort, bickering back at him, "Blood feuding isn't worth dung, maggot-brain! We haven't caught any other slaves in a week o' hunting. I'm not letting you kill the first we've seen! Right, Barbaurak?"

The fourth orc, Barbaurak, strode forward with an authoritative air. He stood a head taller than the other two, nearly as tall as an uruk. With a swift kick, sent them both tumbling forward, "Listen here, the lot o' ya. 'Specially you, Silgak! Snake-tongue is right, if we return to the ship with not a single slave in tow, we ain't getting rations. I'm not willing to starve because Tuka got the piss taken outta him by a softskin female!"

Alaesia recoiled as the orc, Silgak pinned his eyes on her, expecting him to lunge given the slightest chance. The other orc, Zathra, held him tight and nodded mischeviously at her, "Gawping isn't very nice, lass. No need to look so scared, I won't let him hurt ya."

Silgak gnashed his crooked fangs at her, while growling back at his leader, "Tuka was my blood brother. Her life is mine!"

"Shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you, Silgak!" The leader of the remaining trio barked. "If you can't control yourself, I'll chain you up and sell you on the block myself! That tark is worth more to us alive than dead. You'll just have to deal with the loss."

The threat of being sold off as a slave made Silgak bit his tongue with defiant submission. His lips curled, but he didn't protest and Zathra released the grip he had on Silgak's armor. As both Silgak and Zathra moved fowards to seize her, Alaesia raised her sword with a snap from the water. The sudden movement managed to just nick the closer of the pair, Zathra's, cheekbone.

"Ha! Cheeky one aren't you!" He laughed, having just barely tilted his head to the side to avoid receiving the same fatal blow that Tuka had.

"Just l-leave me alone! I c-can't go back! I won't!" Alaesia's voice cracked in desperation. The orcs converging on Alaesia simultaneously reached out to grab the woman, with lightning quick reflexes. She tried to pull away, only to be unable to move through the mud that now held her fast. Silgak had waded into the water behind her, and slammed his clawed hands mercilessly into her arms to restrain her.

"Come now, you're gonna hurt someone with that!" Before she could strike again, Zathra seized her weapon and twisted it deftly from her grasp and tossed it clear from river to Barbaurak, who remained a respectable distance above the muddy shore.

He inspected the blade with an appraising eye, before tucking it into the back of his belt, "Nice blade, I'll just take care of that, for safe keeping, eh? Let's get her chained up and outta the water."

Alaesia wanted to scream, she wanted to punch and kick, but the thought of being taken captive once again paralyzed her. Before she could cave to her instincts to scream and scratch like tarkish women were prone to, Zathra hissed a soft command under his breath to her, "Hush, lil sharlob. Keep quiet and you won't get hurt."

Every bit of her body told her to resist, but his words felt heavy in her mind. All semblance of hope was fleeting and deserted her in the face of multiple assailants. Mordor is a cursed place. There is no hope for freedom here, she thought bitterly. Silgak dug his dirt-stained nails into her skin angrily, only to be reprimanded by his superior. What the orc Barbaurak said, didn't quite register in her ears; but the sting made Alaesia's mind snap from her hopelessness and she threw her weight away, trying to pull free of the Silgak's' grasp, only making him dig his nails deeper. He whispered under his breath so only Alaesia could hear, "Just give me a reason. Make a peep, and I'll cut yer throat open!"

It was only when the pair of orcs began to pull at their prize, did they realize why she wasn't able to flee. The shackles on her ankles had sunk so deep in the mud, it now held her fast in place.

Zathra glanced down at the collar around her neck, and how the chain hanging from it sank into the mud-churned waters of the river, "Ah, skai. This one seems to be an escapee. Her chains must be stuck on something."

Silgak's voice next to Alaesia's ear made her flinch, "Then let me have 'er and we can be done with it."

"Shut yer trap, Silgak! I'm not warning you again!" Barbaurak reached for something on his belt, and tossed a ring of keys towards Zathra, who plucked the ring from the air with ease. Among the bunch of keys was a slim set of metal hooks, carefully designed to pick any locks, "Just unlatch her old metal, an' we can get new rings on her once ya've got her outta the river."

The stench of Silgak's breath swarmed her nostrils as he huffed in irritation, nearly making her wretch from the rotten odor of putrefying teeth. Alaesia tried to pull from his grip but he locked her limbs in the bend of his own, while Zathra ducked beneath the water. She could feel him tug on the chain leading to her feet, and to her surprise, the shackles were quickly sprung open. While she was still restrained, he made short work of unlocking the remaining restraints on her wrists and neck before letting the metal sink back into the water. Upon completing that, it didn't take much effort for the pair to haul her roughly back onto the riverbank.

Alaesia had very nearly forgotten what it felt like to not be weighed down by her chains. The instant relief of the heavy ironworks was bittersweet; it was something she never dreamed of, and would likely never feel again, as the leader of the orcs had suggested, the freedom was temporary. Barbaurak ordered Silgak to keep her restrained while he and Zathra retrieved their own shackles from their gear.

"P-please… Just let m-me go…" she tried to plead, but Alaesia wasn't even sure the words passed her lips, as a sob caught in her throat.

By the way Silgak's throat rumbled, it seemed he took great pleasure in pinning Alaesia forcefully into the ground until his companions locked new shackles on each of her limbs. As they did so, the blood brother orc sneered at the human's hopeless expression as angry tears welled at the edges of her eyes, "Ya had better bring in a pretty profit for all the trouble yer was worth! Clearly some fool of an orc had failed to discipline his slave enough, if yer was running around loose, armed, and slaughtering good orcs!" He noted the heavy scarring on Alaesia's exposed skin, and wondered aloud, "Maybe I shoul'... contribute to them marks of yers…"

Barbaurak hissed at him, "Unless ya plan on paying her price, ya won't get the pleasure of torturing 'er... Whole slaves sell much better than crippled ones."

When Silgak lingered just a moment too long near Alaesia, the other orc shoved him away. He whirled on the others, screeching in hoarse, deranged voice, "None of yuhs understand wot it means to lose a blood brother! Your bleedin' profits mean nothing to me! She must pay for his life! I don't care a single lick! I'm takin' wots owed to me!"

Spittle flew from his maw, as he spit at the other orcs, and threw himself forward, drawing a rusted and chipped blade from his belt. Barbaurak met him with the broad edge of his pauldron and body checked Silgak before he could get within striking range of Alaesia. The leader of the trio snarled back, while drawing his own blade, "Stand down, dog-meat!"

Zathra, who had yet to draw his own sword, bolted forward and reached for Alaesia's chain. With one swift tug, he reeled her out of striking range of either of the hotheaded orcs, who seemed ready to slit each other's throats. Alaesia tried to resist, but the orc was surprisingly strong for his lean build.

He muttered softly to the captive, as though coaxing her to obey, "Come on now. Ole Zathra won't let them two brutes harm ya. I'll take care of ya, I promise. Ya just need to follow me."

Hand over hand, he pulled her chain closer. Alaesia wanted to flee, but her legs wouldn't move. She heard the other two orcs slam together behind her, but for some reason her eyes felt locked with the orc's, Zathra's, gaze. She winced as he reached out to the small cuts the blood brother's jagged nails had left on her arms, which caused the Zathra to withdraw his grip, and gesture disarmingly towards the marks of her skin, "I can even mend ya up, make ya right as rain on the moor. Ya ain't need to fret, it won't hurt a bit."

The gentleness with which Zathra spoke was somehow the most terrifying thing Alaesia had ever experienced, and yet she felt compelled to watch. He demonstrated by tracing a finger over the cut she had given him upon his own cheek bone. No matter how much she wanted to turn away, her focus was enraptured as she stared intently on the injury. She was almost completely distracting her as he grabbed her arms once more, and passed his finger over each cut in turn.

Simultaneously, she saw a faint glow from the cut on the orc's cheek, and felt a slight tingle from the nicks on her own limbs. The glow crawled across the length of the orc's injury, leaving unblemished skin as it diminished. The tingling sensation faded from her skin, and she looked down to see Zathra wipe the remaining beads of blood off her healed skin.

"There now… See?" he murmured, "I mean ya no harm. Ya look like you've been through so much 'ardship. Why don't ya follow me to our nice boat, and I'll make sure yer well fed and taken care of. Get a roof over that pretty red head of yers. Didn't that sound nice?"

Before Alaesia could nod, the leader of the trio, Barbaurak, shoved past her, while wiping gore from his sword. He swatted at Zathra with his free hand, "You disgust me. Quit toying with the snaga scum, she's not a lost puppy."

Her trance suddenly broken, Alaesia pulled her arms from Zathra's soft grasp. The new shackles on her ankles felt unfamiliar and the chains between them shorter, causing her to stumble backwards, only land next to Silgak's decapitated body laying sprawled amid a cloud of settling dust. A horrified cry began to rise in Alaesia's throat, only to be interrupted as the orc, Zathra, grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him instead of the body.

"Hey… hey… keep yer eyes on me. It's alright, yer safe, everything is going to be alright now…" Between uttering bewitching whispers to their captive, he retorted to his leader, "Tis much less troublesome to manage snaga who want ta follow, than containing stupid ones who might harm themselves in fighting back."

Barbaurak scowled back but didn't protest as he watched his underling coax the human woman to follow obediently behind him; perhaps Zathra Snake-Tongue was right, but there was something to be said for the sport of terrorizing pinkskins.

****Translations****

Sharlob - Human woman

Tark - Human

Skai - Shit

Snaga - Slave