A groan escaped my lips as I stirred to life.

“Nick!” Daisy said. It was good to hear her. It was good to hear anything.

“Hey,” I muttered as I tried to open my eyes. They didn’t seem to want to cooperate.

“Try not to move. You took a bad hit,” she said. Her cool hands touched my face and her subdued song filled the air as she channeled her healing power into me. I instantly felt better. Of course, I felt awful, anything would be better. My stomach lurched, and I rolled over, puke filling up my throat and I vomited, which degenerated into a hacking cough.

Everything hurt from my feet to my hair.

“Daisy,” I managed to spit out. “What happened?”

“After you went down, and then Alissa, I... I surrendered. I hoped I did the right thing,” she whispered.

“You did. It was the next thing I was going to say before the big one hit me. There were too many of them and—”

My voice caught in my throat as I rolled over and saw her. Anger burned bright in me and I wanted to kill everyone of the bastard orcs.

We were in a wooden cage in the back of a cart, I couldn’t see what was pulling us, but there was an orc with a whip on top who cracked it over something that made a strange noise between a groan and a growl every few minutes.

That wasn’t what made my blood boil with rage.

Alissa was bound to the side of the cart, she was beaten, bruised, and the side of her face was a mess of purple and darker green splotches. They had left the wrap around her waist, but had taken the leather armor she wore on her chest, exposing her breasts for the world to see.

And Daisy... they took all her armor, boots, pants, everything but the white gauss top she wore under the padded armor that protected her from the banded mail. Her hair was down in a mess. She had several hand sized red welts up and down her legs and one on her tear-streaked face.

“Daisy,” I leapt up, regretting the sudden movement and managing to push down the bile with sheer anger. “Are you okay?” It was a stupid thing to ask, but it was all I could manage.

She collapsed into my arms, pushing her face against my chest. There wasn’t enough room to stand in the cage. It was barely long enough for us to lie down in, and only wide enough to sit with our back against one side and our feet on the other.

I still had to hunch a little just to sit up. Her warm body pressed against mine and I could tell she was trying to be strong. She didn’t cry, but I felt her need to.

I put my arms around her and patted the back of her head. “It will be okay,” I whispered.

“Will it?” she asked into my chest. “Nick, they... they said they were going to... that I was going to be... please Nick, don’t let them do that to me? Kill me first, please?” she asked, begged really, in a whisper.

Her pleading to kill her to keep them from gang-raping her really pissed me off. Why hadn’t I waited to choose warrior? I could have killed all these orcs by myself. If I was Deusbarbarus, with his hellforged sword, this fight would haven been laughably easy. Instead, I was Nick Spencer, weakling.

“It’s okay, Daisy. Don't give up hope.”

She pushed away from me, looking up with those big green eyes of hers. “How can you know that? You’re not from here. You don’t know the stories of what the orcs do to women they capture...” she dropped to the wooden floor, burying her face in her arms.

“You’re right, I don’t, I’m sorry. But...” I said, putting a hand on her back to comfort her. “I knew they wanted to capture us because of Alissa. I didn’t see how many there were, but if we’d kept fighting, we would be dead or—”

“—Or captured still but hurt far worse,” she said, finishing the sentence for me.

“You did the only thing that you could. Where I’m from there’s a brilliant doctor who said, ‘Life finds a way.' If we’re not alive, how could we find a way?” I asked.

She nodded, wiping her face dry, and the steely resolve of the badass cleric returned as she set her jaw. “You’re right... this doctor...,” she drawled the unfamiliar word. “Was he right?”

“Ian Malcolm? Yeah, he was always right,” I told her with a grin. “About everything.”

She nodded, giving me the first glimmer of a smile since I woke up. I checked myself for broken bones, surprisingly I had none. I winced when I touched my collarbone, though. I looked at Daisy questioningly. I was sure it had broken.

“I did my best, I can mend bones but there was so much damage on both of you, that I just couldn’t heal you completely, it was the best I could do,” she said, crossing one arm over her breasts as she spoke. “I can only heal so much before I’m exhausted.”

I’d forgotten how flimsy her gauss top was. That’s when I noticed the half dozen orc warriors walking next to us, three on either side. They cast lecherous glances at her from time to time, smirking with their tusk-filled mouths. One said something in their guttural language and they all laughed while looking at her.

Yelling at them would do no good, but I could certainly help her. I pulled off my tunic. The canvas hard material was cut in several places, the longest being the slash down the middle of the back. I took hold of both sides of the tear and heaved, ripping it the rest of the way in half.

I set one of the pieces aside, crawled over to Alissa, and used it to wrap around her naked breasts. I did my best to tie it behind her. Then I brushed the hair out of her face and winced at the bruises. They really beat the hell out of her. She wouldn’t look at me, only at the ground.

“It’s going to be all right, Alissa Ragnarsdottir.”

After I was done, I took the last one and motioned for Daisy to turn around. When she did, I reached under her arms and wrapped the tunic around her torso, mimicking what I did for Alissa, binding it in the back with two loose parts. It wasn’t the sturdiest thing ever, but it would give her some structure and keep the orcs from ogling her. This wasn’t the best time, but it wasn’t until that moment I realized how large her breasts were. I felt like a heel for even thinking about it.

“Thanks, Nick, that’s sweet,” she said over her shoulder while I tied it together. Our faces were only inches apart and despite the situation, my heart sped up to a million beats per hour.

I coughed, finished tying it off, and backed up. “No problem,” I said, trying to look anywhere but at her as my face heated.

Way to go Nick. She fears being gang-raped and you act super creepy.

“Daisy, I won’t let them hurt you,” I said to reassure her. I had more confidence in my voice than I felt, and I wasn’t really sure I could stop them, but maybe it would help her a little.

She nodded, giving me a tiny smile on those gorgeous lips. “I know, thank you,” she said without really believing it. The cleric withdrew, crawling over to Alissa to check on her, holding one hand on her forehead while she sang quietly using her healing magic.

I took the moment to search the surrounding area. We were still in the woods, though it was much sparser. Where we were before, the trees were lush and thick. Here it looked like an army of woodcutters had gone through and cut down three out of every four trees. The cart they carried us in had two wheels twice as tall as me. I tried to see what was pulling, but I just didn’t have the vantage to do so.

At least they didn’t have Briana and Lexi. That would have sucked. But... there was just nowhere for them to hide in this mess of a forest. I know Briana was stealthy, and Lexi was tiny, but even so... I had to have faith in them. They wouldn’t abandon us. I just needed to be ready when they were.

The whip filled the air again, and the cart turned, slowing as it started up the hill. The orc that had tackled me looked over and laughed, pointing at something I couldn’t see. He guessed I couldn’t understand him, so he dragged his thumb across his throat while grinning evilly at me.

I swallowed hard. Yeah, I understood that gesture. It was universal. He laughed and walked ahead. The lines I had managed to slash on his back were gone, healed up. Now that was a neat trick. I gave him the bird, though I doubted he would even know what that meant.

I wracked my brain for clues about orcs from the game. My info was woefully out of date, but I didn’t remember anything about orcs being able to regenerate so fast or be so thoroughly tough.

It had to be the shaman Alissa mentioned, Bartuce?

As the cart evened out, it allowed me to see the beginnings of a mighty wooden fortress. I realized where all the wood went. A giant palisade wall fifteen feet high stretched out a hundred feet in either direction. It was a massive orc fortress with a kill zone that extended down to the bottom of the hill, a thousand feet.

The walls were anchored by watch towers that stretched twenty-five feet up and had a full view of the area around the fort.

“Daisy, has this always been here?” I asked the redhead.

She shook her head, her eyes wide with fear. “We’re less than a day West of Griffindale... there was never a fort here. There’s no need. Between the forest and the mountains, there are only a handful of farming and foresting communities here.”

That pretty much settled it. The orcs were working for Kojiman, and they were doing a lot more than just raiding to soften up the towns. This wasn’t a temporary fort, this was a foot hold base.

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We passed through the open doors, glimpsing men chained to the mechanism that opened and closed the doors. I growled, seeing people used as slaves. They weren’t warriors either, just old men and boys. Farmers, for the most part. The injustice of it bothered me greatly. Here these people already had a hard life and then the orcs come and make it a hundred times worse.

“Farmer Crenshaw!” Daisy yelled, leaping to the side of the cage and holding out her hand.

An older man with a dirty beard, who looked like he hadn’t eaten in several days, looked up. For a second, there was a glimmer of hope in his eyes before it was squashed by seeing the cleric in the mobile prison.

“I’m sorry Daisy,” he said loud enough for her to hear. Then we were past the gate and they were hidden by a small building that housed the gate guard. Massive ropes led from the turnstiles the slaves manned to open and close the heavy doors. I filed that away for later use.

From an engineer's perspective, the fort was well designed. The walls leaned out, were anchored with heavy ropes on the inside. The keep they constructed sat against the rear wall and had the beginnings of a mead hall. The interior courtyard was big enough that even with all the construction, there were a half dozen hide tents decorated with skeletons and feathers. Including the largest one, which looked a lot like a tepee, and another that mimicked a barracks.

“Nick, this is bad. This isn’t like them at all. I’ve known some of these orcs, this... this is madness,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen them this—”

“—Organized?” I offered.

She nodded.

The cart jerked to a halt, sending us painfully against the wooden bars. Two of the warriors opened the rear door. One was bald, with a shiny green head latticed with scars. From the fine white beard he had, I suspected he was older. The other had bushy black hair and eyebrows, but no beard. He had a blue scarf wrapped around his arm.

I held a hand up to Daisy, silently imploring her not to fight. They ignored both of us as a third one cut Alissa loose. I couldn't believe she shared a commonality with these people. The orcs were seven feet tall with broad shoulders and flat, ugly faces, and pointed flaps for noses. Compared to Alissa’s beauty, these orcs were monsters.

I watched as they dragged her to the largest tent. A moment later they returned for Daisy, half crawling in to grab her arms and then forcefully pulling her from the cart. She handled it well, with her head held high as they took her through the mud to the barrack-like tent. This one was longer than the rest, and it only had the one flap, guarded by two orcs in a mishmash of leather armor and long spears.

They seemed organized, yet also still in a tribal mindset. I searched the compound, and found half a dozen orc women tending to children, making food, and carrying on. All the men I saw were the warriors, but this few of them... it couldn’t be the whole tribe, could it?

They returned, this time reaching in to get me. I crawled out, not waiting for them to pull me out. I was tempted to resist, but if I could lull them a little, I would. The bushy eyebrow one laughed at me and said something humorous to his buddy in orcish. If I had to guess, it was about my size.

The bald one pushed me away from the cart, where the driver was busy whipping whatever pack animal pulled the cart, and toward the fancy-looking tent they had dragged Alissa into. I took the hint and started walking. A big fist hit me in the back, sending me face first into the mud. I hit the ground knees first and tried to stop myself when an even bigger boot hit my shoulders and smashed me flat into the mud. I hit face first, sputtering to breathe in the two-inch deep mud.

Rolling over, I wiped the mud from my face and sucked in a lungful of air. The bushy eyebrow orc said something and laughed, pointing at me. His partner followed suit and the half dozen orcs nearby joined in.

Maybe I didn’t have to lull them this much. I lifted my foot up and rammed it into his crotch as hard as I could.

No matter how tough he was, the testicles were still soft tissue. I learned that when my five-year-old niece dropped me like a sack of potatoes when I was home on leave.

Bushy-eyebrow orc folded, letting out a bellow of pain as his knees came together and he dropped into the mud. I expected the other orcs to be angry. Instead, they howled with laughter, pointing, while their friend wallowed in the mud.

His partner picked me up with one arm and shoved me in the direction we were going.

“I like you human, you don’t lay down and take it like others. Are you a different tribe?” he asked in his low, guttural voice.

I nodded. “Yes, I’m an American. We don’t know how to quit.”

“Noble; too bad you’re so puny,” he said with a laugh.

It was possible that not all the orcs were bad. Maybe they weren’t all that different from humans. One faction seized control, and the others were forced to go along with it.

“So is a bee, but you run when you hear them,” I replied with a grin.

That pulled him up short for a second. He eyed me carefully, as if seeing me for the first time.

“I’ll give you this, American. Your stature may be small, but you have orc sized balls. Try not to get them chopped off.”

He didn’t say anything else, just shoved me along to the tent. I took his advice to heart. After all, I liked my balls where they were.

The large triangular tent was divided into sections by tall blankets. Each section was a pie wedge meeting at the top where they were open to the sky to let the fresh air in. It was still spring. A setup like this would be great for summer, but not awesome for winter without some kind of shield to keep the rain out.

The entry area was obviously set up to be a throne room of sorts. Twenty feet on a side and fifteen feet deep. The closer to the center the room got, the more narrow it became. It ended in an elevated throne made of wood and shaped like a spider’s web on the back with lots of spikes and spears. It made for a very threatening image, not quite Conan and his throne of bone, but it didn’t need to be.

The bald guard shoved me down until my knees hit the thick bear skinned floor. It galled me to kneel, but I wasn’t in a position of authority here, and I had no real power to resist. I just needed to out think them. Which meant staying alive long enough to do that.

The curtain on the left opened, and I glimpsed Alissa. She was lying on a raised platform on her side with her back to me. Torchlight flickered over her, casting shadows on the curves of her back and ass. They’d removed her clothes and an old orc woman tended to her wounds. Even beaten as she was, her beauty was undeniable.

Then he came through and closed the curtain behind him. I turned my head away from her before he looked at me. I didn’t want him knowing how much I cared about her. The less he knew the better.

The orc was not what I expected. For one, he was young. Not the older witch doctor I imagined when Alissa told me about him. He had a trim waist and thick, ripcord muscles that rippled as he moved. He wasn’t as tall as the warrior behind me, or as wide, but he had a dangerous air to him.

My first thought was what a tool he was in low rise leather pants that showed off his ripped physique. His long black hair hung around his clean-shaven face and he looked like slightly more human than the rest of the orcs we’d encountered. Like some kind of orc rockstar. The only thing missing was a guitar and a groupie. Almost handsome... almost.

On top of that, his arms were covered in tribal ink from his wrists to his shoulders and pecks.

Great, another awesomely ripped man with buckets more to offer physically than me. I wonder if he’s in the game? Maybe an elite orc unit?

“You’re Nick Spencer?” he asked without stumbling over my name.

“You’re Bartuce,” I stated, not asking like he did.

He scowled, looked at the orc behind me, and nodded. I expected it, but that didn’t make it any less painful when he cuffed me on the back of the head.

“Speak only when told too,” the old orc said behind me.

I nodded.

“Good,” Bartuce said. He didn’t sound like an orc, and he didn’t look exactly like an orc... what was going on? Was this Kojiman’s influence? Or maybe something else. Perhaps a half orc like Alissa?

“Our scout party came back from Griffondale with word of a strange human who had taken a group to the Haunted Halls. I have to admit, I thought they meant a warrior from the north or a jungle fighter from the south... I didn’t expect a child,” he said with a grin as he sat down on his throne.

I bristled, but kept my tongue in check. No need to give him a free hit.

“You may speak,” he said with a nod.

“How gracious of you, your highness,” I said with loads of sarcasm. He must have missed it because he certainly didn’t act offended. “Why are you working for Kojiman? The orcs are better than being some dark lord's minions.” I wanted to see how far they were with him. The orcs were the very definition of noble savage. They lived and died by their honor code. In the game, they were a hundred years distant from the savages they were acting like.

The low growl from the old orc behind me confirmed what I had thought before. This was not who they were.

Bartuce scowled at the orc. “I’m the tribal chief, ordained in glorious combat and settled by the gods. These orcs follow me now, and your petty words mean nothing.” His evil grin stretched across his face as he glanced at the curtain concealing Alissa.

Then it all clicked. “Are you sure? Because you don’t sound sure,” I said with a grin.

His vanished, replaced by a scowl. He leaped up, stormed right at me, and slapped me across the face. I went down into the dirt, hard enough to daze me.

I have to admit, I’d been hit with a rifle butt that hurt less. The tent spun and my vision dimmed as he knocked me aside. A cough escaped my lips, and I tasted blood.

Damn if he isn’t strong.

“Do not speak again,” he ordered.

“Or what? You’ll murder me the way you did Alissa’s father?” I asked. I was just getting back to my knees when he hit me again. The old orc who led me here shouted something and the two of them started arguing in orcish.

I didn’t mind them arguing because I seriously needed a minute to recover my wits. The side of my face felt like I’d gotten hit by a car.

“Take him away, feed him to the Rorx,” Bartuce said.

The old orc grabbed my head and yanked me up. “You can’t kill me,” I managed to spit out as he dragged me by the neck to the entrance.

“Watch me,” the shaman said with an evil grin.

“If I die, Alissa dies,” I yelled as I was shoved out the entrance.

“Wait!” Bartuce yelled from behind.

The old orc spun me around and dragged me back through. It was supremely annoying being so incredibly helpless around them. Even the old orc who towered over me could easily lift me with one arm and throw me wherever he wanted.

“What do you mean, she dies?” Bartuce demanded, standing directly in front of me and yelling in my face. Bits of spittle hit me and I took a long second to wipe my face before I responded.

“We’re bonded. If I die, she dies,” I said. I left out that the reverse was also true.

“There is no magic that can do that,” Bartuce said.

The orc behind grunted. “There is old magic, the old magic our ancestors practiced.”

“And what would you know of magic, Gank?” Bartuce yelled at the old orc. “You know nothing.”

Gank? What an awesome name.

“I know this human speaks the truth about this, and many things. If he says he has magic that bonded him to Princess Alissa, then you can’t just kill him,” Gank said.

“How?” Bartuce demanded. “Tell me how you have done this?”

I looked at Gank, who gave me a subtle nod and I was thinking maybe I had an ally. “Tell me why you need her,” I said.

Bartuce stormed about the tent for a moment, pacing back and forth and looking at me while his evil eyes planned out my death, I’m sure.

“The tribe enjoys a period of prosperity that they haven’t seen in a generation... that made the old chief—popular. Not every orc has come to my banner... but if I were to bondmate his daughter as one of my wives, then they would. Now tell me how you have bonded her?”

One of his wives? Interesting.

“That’s easy,” I said with a smile. “I’m an enchanter.”

Maybe this prestige class was a bigger deal than I thought? Both of the orcs stepped back.

“There hasn’t been an enchanter in Mystaria for... since... since... The War of the Wastes... Ouak’Gosh,” Gank said.

“That’s a legend, Gank. Keep it to yourself,” Bartuce growled. Why did he look confused, like he didn’t know what Gank spoke of?

“If it’s a legend, then how has he bondmated the daughter of our chief?” Gank replied with fire in his voice.

Wait, bondmated?

I opened my mouth to correct them, then thought better of it. If they think Alissa and I are married, then I probably shouldn’t correct them.

“I am your chief,” Bartuce screamed at the orc. “It’s impossible for him to bond with her,” he said again. He stormed over to me, his fists clenched, and I braced myself for what came next.

Sure enough, he didn’t disappoint. I turned as much as I could when he hit my stomach. I dissipated enough of the energy to keep my ribs from breaking. He followed with an elbow to my shoulders that dropped me straight down. I felt his immense weight on my back as he wrapped his hands around my throat and choked the life out of me.

Then I blacked out.