Chapter One
The occupation of Sandman's Point had reached it's seventh year before the King saw fit to try and retake the desert town. Rachel supposed it was partially due to the town's strategic unimportance. Rumor had it that the Bloodmaw clan had taken it for the sake of having something to brag about than out of need of territory or slaves. That meant that the town had not suffered horribly from their new masters, though Rachel would have been hard pressed to say that she preferred them. Her parents died in combat when the orcs took the town, and ever since she had been the one to raise her sister Sophia. Rachel supposed she should have been thankful that Sebastian Bahn was willing to hire her after they were conquered, but she had become sick of the job since the orcs had started eyeing her developing chest line. Many of the better looking women in the town had been forced to serve the Bloodmaw clan as whores, or taken away to parts unknown. Rachel often feared that the same fate would befall her, but worked in a tavern serving them anyways.
The possibility was especially strong now, since the Bloodmaw clan was determined to hold onto Sandman's Point as a matter of honor, and reinforced their numbers with the addition of three hundred warriors, for a total of four hundred orcs in the town. Many of them had bought weapons from a young orcish merchant who sat in the corner of the tavern. He was a rough looking individual who watched her thoughtfully with a pair of golden eyes and demanded that she refill his drink with more frequency than his bladder could have possibly wanted. The orc's stare made her uncomfortable, but he was a gentleman compared to some of the grunts who would often grope her as she made her rounds.
"So what's a pretty girl like yourself doing at a watering hole like this?" One of the grunts asked as she brought him and his friends a pitcher of beer. He spoke in the orc tongue, which she had learned bits and pieces of through the years. She was not quite fluent in their guttural language, but she could get the general gist of what they said, although she doubted what she was hearing was as polite as she translated it to be.
"Just making a living," she answered cautiously, stumbling over a few of the words.
The orc laughed and gave her right buttock a firm feel. "Come with me, and I'll see to it that you make a better living elsewhere."
Judging by the laughter his comment raised, Rachel surmised that there was some dirty joke in there that she missed, aside from the offer to become his slave. Fortunately, she was spared from having to give an answer by the merchant, who pounded on his table and ordered more beer. She flashed an apologetic smile to the soldier and his friends and quickly left the table. However, orcish grunts were not known for being weak willed and Rachel found him waiting for her just as she came out of the kitchen with another tankard of beer for the merchant.
"What'd you say, eh?" He asked with the smell of hard liquor on his breath. Rachel tried to step around him, but he grabbed her by the wrist almost hard enough to break it.
"Waitress, my beer!" The merchant demanded swiftly upon seeing the altercation.
"Take your beer and go to hell!" The grunt yanked the tankard out of Rachel's hands and flung it at the merchant, covering him in beer. "Leave the women to the real orcs, fucking non-com."
The merchant looked shocked at the attack; insinuating that an orc was a noncombatant and thus unfit for fighting was one of the worst insults that they could imagine. For a moment he looked like he might have risen and started a fight, but then his eyes met the floor in a gesture of submission. He wrapped his heavy cloak around his body and silently finished off the beer in front of him.
Emboldened by his display of aggression the grunt holding Rachel lifted her up and slammed her down on a table, knocking away several dirty plates and glasses in the process. His rough hands tore her bodice apart and make quick work of the shirt underneath, revealing a pair of well formed breasts. He took one in each hand and began fondling them, loudly describing the feeling to his companions, who cheered him on and gathered around to watch the spectacle unfolding in front of them.
"Let me go!" Rachel yelled in embarrassment, doing her best to wrestle with the soldier. It was a futile attempt at freeing herself as he was much stronger than her, but she could not bring herself to lie back and give in to him, even after he gave her a firm backhand that made her see spots. When she regained her vision, she noticed that he had moved on from her breasts to her skirt, which was then ripped from her body to expose her long legs and the black underwear that stood between him and his objective.
Rachel renewed her struggles and managed to give her captor a kick in the head while they were distracted admiring her body, but she was soon seized by all of her limbs and held down as the grunt's fingers slowly traced their way up her leg and to her panties. She gave a cry of rage as he played with the elastic band, pulling it up and letting it snap back against her skin. Rachel fought back her tears at the fact that the long dreaded day had finally arrived, vowing to remain strong even as they defiled her.
"Oh fuck it," the merchant sighed, drawing a broadsword from under his cloak, which gave an unnaturally sharp ringing sound as it emerged from its scabbard. The soldier assaulting Rachel barely had time to look behind him before five pounds of steel smashed into his forehead and spilled his brains out over the table.
Rachel rolled to the side in order to avoid the gore and quickly dropped to the ground. She took cover under the table as the other grunts realized what had just happened. The orc in front of her drew a sword from his belt, but the merchant quickly kicked the pommel and sent it flying back into the scabbard so far that it became stuck despite the orc's best attempts at freeing it. The merchant whirled around to parry a blow from another soldier's axe, freeing both the weapon and half of an arm in the process.
The axe landed in front of Rachel and she quickly grabbed it and tripped a grunt with it as he circled around the table to reach the merchant. She tried to hit him with it, but she was unfamiliar with the weapon and it ended up being kicked out of her hands. The grunt swung wildly at her with his own axe, but he fumbled the weapon in his hands and it ended up cutting into his thigh. Blood shot out from a severed artery and he bled out within seconds from the self-inflicted wound.
There was silence in the tavern as the merchant stood in the center of a ring of dead bodies, constantly looking around for more enemies. Rachel became mindful of her nakedness and covered herself the best she could with the tattered remains of her shirt.
"Fuck," the orcish merchant said again. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, I wasn't supposed to do that."
He seemed to have forgotten about Rachel as he checked the windows to make sure no one had noticed the fight. A hail of arrows flew into the room in response; clearly, someone had seen him.
"Fuck," he said again, with a resigned look on his face. The merchant took in a deep breath and charged straight into the wall of the tavern. The wall gave way before him and he burst through the solid timbers and showering several very surprised grunts with rubble. A chaotic melee soon followed between the merchant and an orc patrol ten members strong, where he went about carving his way through them to reach their sergeant. The two dueled for several seconds, with neither coming out on top, until the merchant became fed up and rammed the sergeant with his shoulder. The orc went flying across the street and impacted against the side of a cart full of hay. He steadied himself against the cart, ready to continue the fight, but a dagger swiftly emerged from the hay and caught him in the neck.
The hay was tossed aside as a woman stepped out of the cart. Rachel would have considered her attractive if not for the telltale signs that she was a tiefling; curled ram's horns on her head an a prehensile tale wrapped around her waist. What was such a creature doing in her town?
"What did you do?" The tiefling yelled as she pulled an oak quarterstaff out of the hay.
"I'm sorry, it just happened!" The merchant responded.
"Well I hope it was worth it, because you've just woken up the entire town!"
"Fuck!" The merchant said again. "Do we pull out or what?"
"Can't, they've probably got us surrounded by now."
As if on cue, another patrol rounded the corner with weapons drawn. The tiefling calmly waited until they came within range before mercilessly raining down blows with her quarterstaff. Their leader began to cast a spell in response to the melee, but a cloud of glittering particles appeared around his head and blinded him. His magic went wild and shot off into the night air, leaving a purple streak of energy behind.
Rachel picked a cloak off of a dead orc and wrapped it around herself before peering out of the tavern wall to see who had blinded the patrol leader. There was a lithe figure quietly weaving spells on the roof of the blacksmith's shop across the street. The mage focused on disabling the enemies rather than killing them, perhaps out of an attempt to avoid collateral damage; Rachel had heard bards tell tales of mighty wizards who could level cities with destructive magic and had no desire to see that scenario play out in her town.
