Legacy: One Made out of Blood

They were close, I could hear them. My heart slammed against my chest, beating like a drum in preparation for war. I stumbled as I ran through the forest, stumbling but never falling because I knew deep within me that the moment I stopped running, my life was over.

I was dead long before this race started. I was the maiden selected from my tribe for the maiden hunt, a gory event put on by the Dariths, our lords and masters, the race that has controlled the seven tribes since the beginning of time.

I was selected because I am the last of my family. My father died less than a fortnight ago. He died a disgrace, all because he could not stomach the thought of one of his people being given over to the Dariths for the maiden hunt. He stepped down, and how was he repaid? His only daughter was sent as the maiden representing his tribe in the very next cycle after he died.

A tortured scream rose from my left, which served as motivation for me to run faster. That was the scream of a maiden being caught and raped to death, and if the warriors of Dar got tired of her before she died, she would be taken to the other side of the forest, where she would be burnt alive, along with the bodies of her fellow maidens who had participated in the hunt.

If any maiden managed to reach that field without being caught, she would be granted clemency and a place to live among the Dariths. Our salvation or demise occurred in the same field. It just depended on how we got there.

That is the hope of all maidens. To achieve this impossible goal. Impossible because for more than 400 years, a maiden has never outrun the warriors of Dar. The closest they ever let us get was the middle of the forest before they started picking us off one by one like flies.

I heard the heavy breathing of a man behind me, and I let out a sharp scream, but unlike the rest, I was not screaming out of fear. I had accepted my fate, it had been sealed for some time now. So my scream was one of warning. A warning to any maiden close to me to get as far away as possible because a group of warriors will soon join the one behind me to enjoy the spoils of the hunt. And I was the spoils.

I used the last of my energy to run, and when I focused in front of me, I saw the clearing… I was almost to my freedom when my legs got entangled and I fell. The warrior landed on top of me like he had jumped to catch me, and my breathing halted.

The real torture was about to begin. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the tearing of my clothing and the mauling, but the warrior placed his hand underneath my clothing and shoved a finger in me. My eyes flew open as I tried to buck the warrior off me, but I was pinned down by his heavy weight on top of me. I guess I wasn't as ready to give up as I originally thought I was. I yanked as hard as I could on the warrior's head only for him to chuckle at my efforts.

"A virgin," he muttered. He hauled me up and hung me from his shoulder like a sack of potatoes as he walked briskly to the clearing. I struggled as much as I could, but it didn't make any difference.

I was going to be burned without being ravaged, a virgin sacrifice. Maybe they would task my village with providing only virgins for the hunt. The Idroms were always tasked with providing their weakest female fighters for the hunt, and nobody knew why. I refused to be the reason that future untouched girls from my tribe suffered.

As soon as we reached the clearing, he dropped me to the ground, where I stared wide-eyed at him. He was bigger than every other man I had seen.

"Orel, what is the meaning of this?" an old man in dirty robes asked as gasps rent the air when they realized that I was not dead or raped.

"My bride," my captor replied tautly.

"Don't be ridiculous, Orel, you cannot choose a Maiden of the Hunt as your bride." A woman dressed fancily replied. Her manner of clothing meant she was of noble birth.

"My lady, he can," the dirtily dressed man said as the field went silent, so silent you could hear the screams of the maidens coming from the forest. "A warrior of the hunt can choose a bride from the hunt only if he is satisfied with everything that she is. Are you, Orel, son of Bryman, satisfied with the maiden before you?"

"I am," Orel, my captor, replied.

*Satisfied with me?* my mind rebelled against that thought, *who does he think he is to be 'satisfied' with me?*

"There is nothing she has to offer you. How can you be satisfied with her? You must be joking," the noblewoman shrieked in anger.

Orel spared her a look, then turned back to me and speared me with the full force of his gaze, dismissing her as unimportant. "If I was not satisfied, I would not have chosen her."

I stared into his eyes, completely absorbed. He said those words again, but I did not feel the anger that should accompany them. When he said them, it made me feel giddy inside, which was strange because I was not sure that I even wanted his attention on me.

"How can he do this? Can't you see that he is trying to get out of the marriage? He cannot tell she is his with just one glance," she shrieked again, jerking my mind back to the present. This was a very bad place to get lost in my thoughts.

"Actually, he can," the dirty man said again as the murmuring swelled.

The old man raised his voice high above the din of the crowd and continued, "Many things are expected of the warlord, great things. It has been 500 years since a warlord has picked a bride from the hunt. Back then, terrible but great things happened. Today, another maiden has been picked. Let us hope that the fates are with them. I bless your union."

"I bless your union," people in the crowd repeated, some hesitant, others confused. I was even more confused than they were. Did this mean that I was now married?

"You can leave with your bride," the dirty man said as Orel gave a quick jerk of his chin and picked me up. My stomach landed on his shoulder as he walked off with me hanging off him. I wanted so badly to hit him or scream at him, but my self-preservation kicked in.

This man had just saved me. I only knew of one way that a maiden got to leave this hunt unscathed, and this was not it. But nobody was telling him he was wrong to save me. I did not want to offend him enough that he changed his mind about saving my life.

I raised my head as best as I could, only to see the noblewoman glaring at me in hatred, along with the other warriors as they piled maidens on the pyre in the clearing. Some of these maidens were begging and crying. I hid my face in Orel's clothes as the old man took a torch and set the pyre on fire while the people started chanting.

I shook as I heard the screams, even as the distance between me and the pyre grew larger with every stride that Orel took. I just narrowly escaped death's clutches, but I was still in harm's way—and, it seems, saddled with a husband.

A deep feeling of dread engulfed me. Something told me that this was just the beginning.

Orel dumped me on the neck of a horse and threw his body on the horse immediately after. He moved very fast, but I was sure that was his usual speed. The horse took off as I tried my best to stay on the saddle. Seeing my struggle, he rearranged me on his horse, which should've been impossible to achieve. I did not know how he did it, but I was too busy trying to remain in the saddle to worry about it.

And that was when I realized that Orel's palm on my back meant that he kept just one hand on the reins, and the horse was moving so fast that it was like an arrow flying through the air. 

"Stop struggling, you will not come to any harm, not on my watch." He said gruffly, but unlike in the fields, I was not reassured by his words at all.

"That is nice to know, but you keeping one hand on the reins is not very reassuring, sir." I bit out with a sarcastic edge, I was purposely antagonizing him, and he knew it… His reaction was what I was hoping for to help me survive in the minefield I just found myself. Better a minefield than death, I suppose.

Orel chuckled again as if my biting words were that of a jester to make him laugh. "Stormpacer is an intelligent beast. He knows the way, I don't need to hold his reins to guide him." 

I did not know that it was possible for my stomach to drop, but it did as everywhere went blurry at his words. If I had anything in my stomach, it would be threatening to make a reappearance now, but there was nothing there.

 "Please, do not let go of the reins," I begged in a tiny voice, and he released a burst of laughter. The sound was rich, full, and uninhibited, so much so that it shocked me enough to turn and look at him the best I could.

"Don't worry, wife, I don't plan on scaring you into old age. I plan on sharing your bed with you while you are still youthful," Orel said as I snapped my eyes down and kept my mouth shut. 

Saved or not, it didn't change the fact that I was going to be raped. For the rest of the journey, I was quiet, thinking about my fate. I think that Orel noticed that my mind was in turmoil because he didn't bother me with attempts at conversation, which was surprisingly considerate of him. 

Close to the settlement, Orel took his hands off Stormpacer's reins, and my heart jumped to my throat when the horse increased its speed. Within minutes, we were at the other end of the settlement.

I tried to keep my stomach from revolting, but there was nothing I could do. It refused to settle, regardless of the fact that it was empty. As soon as Orel came down, I started moving restlessly on the horse, and he was forced to remove me quickly from Stormpacer's back. As soon as my feet landed, I wrenched myself out of his hold and fell on the ground to dry heave, as there was nothing more in my stomach.

"Orel," a voice boomed close to my left and had me jerking in shock. "Welcome back." A large man said as he clasped hands with Orel then drew him into a back pat. Between two of them, it looked more like punches to the back.

"It is good to be back, Elison," Orel said, his voice warm with happiness.

I must have made a sound because the large man's gaze turned to me as he eyed me with ill-concealed interest, not a sexual interest, more of a curiosity at this strange little being.

"And who is this?" he asked. Orel grinned as he replied to the man.

"My wife."

*******

"What do you mean your wife?" Elison asked his friend, who seemed to have returned with a gentle-looking doe for a wife instead of a glorified nag and shrew who was never pleased with anything and could not keep her mouth shut to save her life. "Has the stress of having such a shrew as your betrothed gotten to you?" 

Orel released a smile at his friend's words. Best friends since the cradle, the two of them were practically twins from different parents. "I mean exactly that. The only woman whom I am required to spend my life with is in my tent, calming her mind and wondering how she is not dead yet."

"Where is she from and who is she that she has the power to cancel your arrangement with Lady Estrid without controversy? Something you have been trying to do for the better part of a decade," Elison asked as he poured some ale into a goblet for his friend.

"Oh, there will be controversy, but nothing we cannot handle. I don't know where my bride is from or even what her name is. What I do know is that she was a maiden at the hunt," Orel said as the goblet fell from Elison loose grip, splashing wine everywhere. 

"Have you any idea what you have just done?" Elison thundered at Orel.

Orel calmly looked at his friend straight in the eyes and answered without any doubt in his voice. "Yes, I do."

Elison started to pace around the room, ranting to himself in low tones, certain that his friend would be their doom. "Of all the foolhardy stunts you've pulled to try and get out of bad situations, this by far is the most idiotic one. Why do you insist on playing with the edict of fate in this way? The prophecy has been there for ages, and it doesn't speak of all things being good and wonderful. I don't know why you are in such a rush to make it come to pass."

"Eli." Orel thundered as Elison paused in his pacing to glare at his friend. "I didn't just do it to escape Estrid. I went to witness the hunt when she started pestering me about when the wedding will take place, then I saw her. Her spirit was not broken, yet she had accepted her fate. She was kneeling in front of men who were calling out taunts and offensive words, yet she had the bearing of a queen. Why would I settle for a noblewoman when I could have a queen? She certainly cannot be worse than Estrid." Orel grinned, and when Elison looked ready to bash his head into his neck, he continued.

"Something pushed me to join the hunt. Estrid thought that it was a way for me to release sexual tension since she has warned all women away from me unless they want to suffer for the rest of their lives. She was like a doe, Elison, running without stopping or giving up. She outran all of us, including me. The only way I caught her was that her leg got tangled because of some roots. I even had to keep her down with my weight lest she take off again and eventually get away. She was going to be the first maiden in 400 years to get away. You know what that means, don't you?" Orel asked Elison, who was suddenly as white as if he had seen a ghost.

"'If the white doe gets away, the Dar empire will fall. With her help, it will continue to thrive.'" Elison whispered under his breath, a small piece of the prophecy that foretold of the hardest times in Dar history.

 

Orel nodded grimly. "Somehow, my wife will save us all, we know what threatens to befall our empire." He looked in the direction of his tent, "Now we also know our salvation."

***********************

By the time Orel returned to the tent where he had dropped me off, the thoughts running through my head had taken the form of my worst nightmare. I kept thinking that he was going to kill me. I did not have the strength to pace around the room in my agitated state, not when I had not eaten a good meal in some days, and the last time I ate was close to twenty-four hours ago. 

I was tired and weak, and my eyes were sleepy, but I did not dare to close them, not sure where I would find myself when I opened them. 

The tent flap opened as Orel came in. He paused when he saw that I was still awake. "You need anything?" He asked in his usual gruff tone, and I shook my head. Watching him watch me. 

"Why are you still awake then?" He asked. I wetted my lips before I spoke so that my voice would not come out unused. 

I saw him watch the action, then he started to take off his clothes. I froze. 

He must have seen my deer-in-the-headlights look because he chuckled and shook his head at me. "I promise that I will not do anything to you—this evening." He said as I nodded, my expression still unsure. 

I wanted to believe his words, and in a way, I did, but I did not trust him, not yet. When he saw my inner conflict, he sighed and relieved me of it. "You have my word, Themis." 

I nodded, believing that I could certainly hold a warrior to his word. I laid down to rest on the bed, which felt like heaven, and within minutes I was deeply sleeping.