Page 50 of Orc's Pride
My eyes water, his image becoming blurry and hard to see. “I can’t leave you!”
“Stupid,” Ishta laughs, grabbing Pitha by the back of his armor and hauling him onto his knees again. His hand fists around the arrow. “Both of you are so mindless that it pains me.”
“NO!” I jolt forward, letting the axe fall from my hands.
Ishta rips the arrow out of Pitha’s neck, the wound gaping from where it had once been lodged and blocking him from bleeding out. My orc crumbles to the ground in a lifeless way that tears me to shreds inside.
“Pitha!”
Ishta laughs at us, turning away from the blood scene to retrieve his axe from where he’d thrown it earlier. I drop to my knees next to Pitha, and try to roll him over onto his back, but it’s truly a fruitless effort. His body weight is way too heavy for me to get very far and the only thing I end up accomplishing is getting him onto his side.
My tears are falling from my cheeks by now, a sob threatening to wrack through me as I stare down at his slowly paling face.
“No…”
His hand comes up to press over the wound, his fingers instantly being coated in his own blood.
“Go… Dana, please.”
I shake my head at him, applying pressure over the wound as well. “I can’t leave you here.”
He opens his mouth to argue with me when a shadow appears over us. Pitha’s eyes go wide with the kind of fear I’ve never known him to possess.
His breath hitches. “No…!”
I turn to look up over my shoulder at Ishta, his axe raised high over his head in the same execution style I’d used on the dark elf only moments before. For some reason, the sight brings me peace. The finality of it all clicks in my mind the moment Ishta’s face breaks out into a wild grin.
Even though I’ll never be able to deliver my list to Malik, the least I can do is protect Pitha in the meantime—cover him with my own body while the giant axe comes down to cleave me in half.
His blade is sharp, but not sharp enough to cut me down to the bone to get to Pitha right away. If we’re both to die here, I want to do so by protecting the person that I love and care about—even if it’s fruitless in the end.
Taking my hands off of Pitha’s neck, my arms come around him to cover both his head, neck and part of his chest from view. I feel him pull in a surprised gasp when I squeeze him tightly.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur.
“Wow,” Ishta says above us. “A two for one deal. How excellent.”
The next second, I hear the blade swinging down.
22
Pitha
Blindly, I reach for Dana, pushing at her shoulder to let go of me.
She doesn’t budge, and my efforts only seem to double down hers. Her arms tighten around me, squeezing me impossibly tight as she surrounds herself to protect me.
What a stupidly beautiful creature she is.
Her body stiffens when the wind from the axe plummeting towards us breezes past us. I tense myself, ready for the impact to hit us both and ready for that blood curdling scream to leave her body once the blade makes contact.
“Fuck!” Ishta shouts, his axe coming down to bury itself next to my body in the dirt.
The impact has me shuddering in relief.
“What—?” The other orc’s demands are quickly cut off, following the sound of a large body dropping to the ground at my feet.
The quiet stillness of the forest leaves us both holding our breath in anticipation.