Thrall - Christie Golden [43]
“Oh, I know you won’t, because I’ll blow your brains out. Now: Get up, move slowly. You’re worth more to me alive than dead, but don’t think I wouldn’t settle for a lesser bounty if you give me any trouble.”
He obeyed, moving slowly as she had ordered, keeping his hands where she could see them.
“Over by that tree, to your left, then turn around and face me,” she ordered.
Thrall complied, turning slowly—
And gasped.
The woman in front of him was thin, almost gaunt. Her short, close-cropped hair was pale. She appeared to be in her early thirties and wore practical pants, boots, and shirt. The moonlight made her face look haggard, casting shadows beneath her cheekbones and under her eyes, but Thrall did not think sunlight would be any kinder. She might have been beautiful once. In fact, Thrall knew she had been.
“Taretha,” he breathed.
NINE
Taretha’s eyes narrowed as she aimed the blunderbuss straight at his broad chest. “I won’t miss,” she said. “How do you know my name?”
For a wild moment Thrall was totally confused. And then he understood. He must have stumbled into one of the wrong timeways—one of the ones that the bronze dragonflight was trying to repair. Because, painful as it was, he knew that Taretha Foxton, his only friend in childhood, had never lived beyond her midtwenties.
“This is going to sound very strange, but please, I urge you to believe me,” he said, trying to sound as calm—and as sane—as possible.
An eyebrow lifted. “You speak well … for a stinking greenskin.”
It hurt to hear Taretha, who had always thought of him as a brother, use such ugly words to Thrall, but he did not react.
“It is because I was educated—by humans,” he said. “I was raised by Lord Aedelas Blackmoore to be a gladiator. He made sure I learned how to read and write, the better to understand war strategy. Your mother, Clannia, saved my life, Taretha. She nursed me when I was an infant. My name … is Thrall.”
The gun wavered, but only for an instant. Thrall could tell by the way she handled it that Taretha was no stranger to firearms.
“That’s a lie,” she said. “That orc died after a few days.”
Thrall’s mind reeled. So he had existed in this timeway … but had died in infancy. It was all so hard to take in. He tried again.
“Have you heard about dragons, Taretha?”
She snorted. “Don’t insult me. Of course I have. What do they have to do with an orc I’m rapidly losing patience with?”
She was so harsh, so bitter. Still, Thrall pressed on. “Then perhaps you know that there is one group of dragons called the bronze dragonflight. Their leader is Nozdormu. They make sure that time unfolds the way it is supposed to. In another timeway, as I told you, I survived and became a gladiator, just as Blackmoore wanted. You sneaked me notes, hidden in books. You became my friend.”
“Friend to an orc?” Disbelief made her voice climb higher. “Not likely.”
“No,” he agreed. “Most unlikely. And most wonderful. You remembered the baby your mother nursed, and you were fond of him—of me. And you hated what they did to me. I have only just met you, yet I say I already know something about you. I believe that you do not like violence done to beings who cannot defend themselves.”
The gun wavered a second time, and her eyes flickered away for just an instant before she turned her gaze upon him again. Hope filled Thrall’s heart. Whatever had befallen her to make the gentle young woman he had known so tough and hard, he could tell that she was still Taretha underneath it all. And if she was still Tari, maybe he could reach her. Could help her, somehow, some way, in this timeway, in a way he had been unable to in his own.
“You helped me escape,” he continued. “I freed my people from the internment camps. I defeated Blackmoore and razed Durnholde. And later, humans and orcs and others united to defeat an attack on our world from a demonic force called