The village still smelled of ash and iron.
Dawn washed a pale blue over the broken treeline and the churned earth by the river. Where grass had been, there were gouges and craters. Where trunks had stood, there were splinters and black blood crusting like tar. Villagers walked the scarred ground in slow, careful steps, voices kept to the edge of whispers as if a loud sound might call the night back again.
"He split the big one in half, I swear it," a miller said, running a hand over a trunk that had been snapped clean.
"With those tiny arms?" an old man muttered, clutching his charm of carved bone. "No child should carry that much violence."
A young boy, eyes bright, held a stick like a sword and chopped at the air. "I'm Orin! BOOM!" His mother jerked him back by the collar.
They glanced at the riverbank where the last, largest corpse had been dragged and burned by sunrise. A pile of ash lay there now, gray smoke thinning into the morning. Children kept asking to see it; parents kept saying no. No one wanted the image burned into their heads the way last night had burned itself into every corner of the village.
From the north path—barefoot, bruised, and grinning wider than the sky—strode Orin.
His shirt was basically a memory: torn at the collar, shredded at the sleeves, flapping behind like a defeated flag. A belt cinched shorts that had more hole than cloth. His arms and legs wore purple and yellow like strange medals, and a black smear of dried blood cut across his cheek. He walked with the swagger of a warlord and the balance of a toddler.
People stopped what they were doing.
"That boy…" someone breathed.
"Don't stare," hissed another. "He'll think we approve."
A burly farmer crossed his arms, then hesitated, then raised a fist half in salute, half in self-defense.
Orin waved as if he'd just returned from picking berries. "Morning!" he called. "No more loud pigs in the forest. You can thank me with food!"
A ripple of unsure laughter moved through the square. Some looked relieved despite themselves. Others turned their eyes away, afraid of liking the feeling.
Hegar came striding out from the crowd, beard still wet from washing ash. "You're walking. That's something." He clapped Orin's shoulder once, hard enough to make a grown man buckle. Orin didn't even sway; he grinned bigger.
Mira hurried after, a roll of clean bandages in one hand, a look of practiced despair on her face. "Sit. I said sit, young man." When Orin tried to argue, she stabbed a finger at the ground. He sat.
She dabbed at a cut on his brow. He winced theatrically and then leaned into her hand like a cat, cheeky and pleased. A few children watched wide-eyed from behind their mothers' skirts; one little girl whispered, "Is he hurt?" Her father grunted, "He doesn't know how to be."
Orin tried to keep still for a whole five seconds. Then he bounced up onto a nearby water barrel and threw his arms wide.
"People of Riverbend!" he bellowed.
"Orin," Mira said in a tone that promised a wooden spoon later.
"Important announcement!" Orin pressed on, chest puffed like a pigeon. "Last night, not only did I punch a giant pig-man so hard his bones sang—"
"ORIN."
"—but also, I met a girl."
The square quieted. Hegar rubbed his temples; he knew that voice, that precious disaster tone.
"She was beautiful," Orin said, working the crowd with both hands, "like—like moonlight but with eyes that were fireflies." He squinted. "No. Like fireflies inside moonlight. Her hair was all shiny, and she said—listen very carefully—she said, 'Remember my face, Orin… one day, you'll come find me. And when you do, I'll be waiting—as both your bride, and your Queen.'" He pointed both thumbs at himself. "So! I have a future wife!"
Silence cracked. Then the village exploded.
"A what?"
"He's ten!"
"Queen? Of which chicken coop?"
"He's concussed."
The boys of the village whooped and ran circles around the barrel shrieking, "Bride! Bride! Bride!" The girls stared with more complicated expressions. One teenage girl folded her arms and sniffed, "Hmph. Who'd marry that mudball?" and then blushed when Orin glanced her way. The elders shook their heads so hard their beards trembled.
"Orin Capillet!" a voice thundered.
Yira came storming across the square, apron flapping, violet eyes blazing. The crowd parted with something like fear and something like expectation; they'd seen this show, but never so well-advertised. She seized Orin by the ear and yanked him off the barrel. He yelped and windmilled, landing in a crouch that would have looked graceful if his face wasn't twisted in pain.
"What are you doing?" Yira snapped, still holding his ear in a death pinch. "Bragging like an idiot in front of the whole village? You want them to think you're crazier than you are?"
"They already think that," Orin said through a grin stretched sideways by her grip. "Ow—ow—ow—easy, my ear will fall off and then I'll only hear half the cheers."
"No one is cheering!"
"Those three boys were!" He pointed at the trio now chanting Bride! Bride! in time with small kicks at the dust. "And. And—she really said it. 'Bride. Queen.' Exactly like that. I even remember the pause." He put a hand to his chest and attempted a falsetto. "'And when you do, I'll be waiting—as both your—'"
Yira twisted harder. "Don't you dare."
Orin's eyes watered. "—ow—brideandyourqueen!" he squeaked, words smashed to save his life.
Laughter rolled across the square, even from those who had sworn they would never let that boy make them laugh. Yira's cheeks went scarlet. She released his ear only to thump a fist against the top of his head. "You are a child. Stop talking about marriage."
"Then I'll marry you instead," Orin said, bright as a coin.
Every breath in a twenty-foot radius stopped.
Yira's mouth fell open. Her blush traveled to her ears, her neck, probably her knees. For one stunned heartbeat she simply stared at him.
Then she kicked him into the nearest puddle.
Orin hit the mud with a splash and came up drenched, hair plastered to his forehead, grinning like a maniac. "Worth it!"
The crowd roared. A few women hid their smiles behind their hands. A couple of men attempted to look stern and failed catastrophically.
"Inside," Yira hissed, pointing toward their house. "Now. Before you announce you've adopted the moon."
"Can I announce I've adopted the sun?"
"ORIN."
He trudged off, still grinning, leaving muddy footprints that looked suspiciously like victory.
By noon the square began to settle. The ash pit by the river was covered, and the last of the shattered bark had been swept into piles. Children were herded home with promises of stew and threats of chores. The sun climbed, bright and hot, and it felt, for a fragile moment, like a normal day in Riverbend.
It wasn't.
Men who had scoffed at the traveler's warnings found their hands shaking when they tried to drink. Women who had never seen an Orc in their lives kept a protective grip on their children even inside their own doors. And between cottage and mill, the name Orin traveled like a moth beating against a lamp—drawn, scorched, returning anyway.
"Bless him."
"Fear him."
"Both."
By the river that evening, Code sat on a smooth boulder with his staff across his knees. The water slid by in a ribbon the color of steel. Midges danced over the surface; a heron stood in the shallows like a patient spear.
Orin trudged up with a loaf under one arm and a strip of meat clenched between his teeth. He plopped onto the same rock as if it were a bench he'd reserved, chewing noisily. His feet didn't reach the water; he swung them anyway.
"Did you sleep?" Code asked without looking.
"Yep." Orin swallowed his bite. "Dreamed I had five wives. No, six. One of them was a tree. She was nice."
"Mm."
"You think the queen-girl is a tree?"
Code finally turned. "No."
"Good," Orin said earnestly. "Kissing bark sounds painful."
A silence as gentle as the current moved between them.
"You were reckless," Code said at last.
Orin shrugged. "I was me."
"That is the problem." Code tapped his staff lightly, the sound hollow. "That girl was not ordinary. The two who took her were not ordinary. They moved as if the ground belonged to them. Their eyes flickered red in the dark and then remembered to be brown. They left no footprints near the mud."
Orin frowned, thinking, then brightened. "They float!"
"Close enough."
Orin leaned back on his elbows, staring at the moon rising pale between the tree crowns. "So? She needs me to find her. I'll get strong and then I'll go. Punch whatever's in the way. Simple."
"Nothing about this is simple," Code said. "If my guess is right, you've touched a road that leads into Hell's court. Promise or not, smile or not, if you step onto that road you will not meet children there. You will meet monsters who wore crowns before your village existed."
Orin listened with the attentiveness of a boy trying very hard to be good for ten whole seconds. Then he nodded vigorously. "Right. So I punch faster."
Code's mouth twitched despite himself. "You cannot punch a court."
"I can punch everything."
"Even your sense into your skull?"
"That one keeps dodging."
They sat a while longer. The heron speared a fish and lifted it, silver and bright, into its beak. Orin let out a low appreciative oooh as if he'd seen magic.
"Teach me more of the palm thing tomorrow," he said. "If I'm going to find her, I need to break bigger things."
"Control first," Code said. "Power second."
"Control then power second," Orin echoed solemnly, having learned nothing and everything. He sprang up, stretching until his back popped. "I'm going to—"
"Not train," Code interrupted. "Heal. The body grows in rest."
Orin pointed at his own chest, offended. "This body grows in trouble."
"Then learn to rest as if it were a fight."
Orin frowned, considered, then brightened. "So I'll sleep violently."
"Go home."
He went, laughing.
In the Capillet house, Mira had made a stew so thick the spoon stood up by itself. She fussed over Orin's cuts again until he submitted purely to save his dinner from going cold. Hegar told the story of a boar he had wrestled in his youth for the six hundredth time. Orin nodded at every beat as if hearing it for the first time, even acting out the boar at the end and ramming his head into Hegar's belly until the man wheezed and Mira aimed the spoon like a spear.
Yira ate in silence, pink still on her cheeks. When she caught Orin looking, she scowled harder. He grinned. She scowled even harder than that.
After the bowls were empty and the coals settled red, Yira fetched laundry from a line and found her apron missing from its peg.
She didn't need to guess where it was.
Orin lay on his mat snoring with the apron clutched to his chest like a trophy, cheek smushed into the fabric, expression deeply pleased.
Yira stood over him a long moment, face cycling through annoyance, embarrassment, and something softer she would not name. Carefully, she tugged the apron free. He made a small noise, reaching reflexively, and she shoved a folded blanket into his arms instead. He hugged it, still smiling.
"Idiot," she whispered, which was maybe the nicest word she had for him.
She folded the apron and pressed it to her face for half a second—just long enough to breathe out a single complicated breath—then hung it back on its peg and marched away as if she'd done nothing at all.
Outside, the village slept. The river whispered. Somewhere a dog barked at nothing and then settled. Code stood at the edge of the square with his staff planted by his foot and his eyes on the horizon.
Clouds were climbing there, black on black, a bruise spreading under the skin of the sky. He could almost feel the air thickening with a taste like iron filings, like struck stone. He closed his eyes and saw a girl with red glimmering eyes smiling as if she had never learned how to be afraid. He saw a boy laughing with blood on his teeth and promise on his tongue.
If she truly is who I think she is… then Hell has already marked him, he thought. And Hell is patient. It does not knock. It waits until the door is already open.
A rumble rolled softly over the hills, not quite thunder, not quite anything. Code opened his eyes.
From the Capillet home came a muffled, triumphant murmur in a sleeping boy's voice: "Don't worry, future wife. I'll punch Hell for you."
Code sighed, half a laugh, half a prayer. "Please don't," he said to the dark.
The dark, for now, did not answer.