The Prison Realm

Chapter 10: Leap of Faith

 "One... Two... Three!"

I gripped the arrow's shaft and pulled as hard as I could. I could feel the wood sliding through the meat of his shoulder. It was... well... It was disgusting actually. But I had to believe Garin'thar when he said that the best way to pull an arrow free was to do it as fast as possible.

As soon as it slid free, I stumbled backward and fell butt-first into the sand. That had been a much simpler process than I had through it would be.

Garin'thar looked over his shoulder at me.

"Are you alright?"

I tossed the arrow aside and brushed off my slave shift.

"Yeah. I think so," I said and joined him beside the fire. He smiled at me, his mood awfully light for someone who had been walking around impaled for most of the day. We rode on after we looted the bandits and freed their mounts. We seemed to be at an impasse after our latest argument, but I wasn't so sure what that impasse was.

We'd stopped for the night, the dunes having given way to a rockier landscape. We found a space in a canyon and taken some time to water Tinir. When it came time to make a campfire Garin'thar had surprised me by walking through each task he was doing as he was doing it, from untying the bedroll to setting up the campfire. It was probably the best way he could have broken our stilted silence. Then he had asked me to help him get the arrow out.

With that done I waited for Garin'thar to apply his own healing potion while I sat beside him. He held out his pack, wordlessly offering me the food first.

"I told you that I am not the type of male that would purchase a woman and that I thought you were special," Garin'thar began. "I meant that."

I remained quiet as the campfire crackled in the night.

"What was a man like that doing in a slave camp?" I asked carefully.

He smiled at my obvious attempt at patience.

"I told you I was scouting," he said. "My tribe has plans of freeing the women in the slave camp and destroying the Paragons. People like them who follow an evil god such as theirs do not deserve to take another breath."

That was surprising.

"Their god requires regular sacrifices. In return that god gives them all unlimited potential for magic. They do not follow their god for any other reason than their own gain. This is probably the reason they had been sentenced to such a realm to begin with."

I didn't think that Garin'thar wasn't as repulsed as I was by the slave keeper's actions, but I was suspicious that a bunch of orcs would go out of their way to kill the bad guys just because it was the right thing to do.

"Why would your tribe do that?"

Garin'thar looked at me with a pointed look on his face.

"The women. You want the women," I realized aloud. I opened my mouth to argue that it wasn't okay to own anyone under any circumstances wasn't okay, but he continued in before I could start arguing at all.

"Not to own. Not to sell," Garin'thar interrupted. "My tribe has a well. It is why we are doing so well compared to the other stragglers in the realm."

My brows shot up.

"A well? You guys have water?" I exclaimed.

"Yes," Garin'thar went on. "We have homes, we have scavengers to find supplies. Hell, we even have the means to make our own brew. We are making a living in this world. We are becoming more than a tribe. We wish to become a village, just like the orcs of my world."