Orlin Proud's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Orlin Proud sold stories for coin, and eleven orphans back home needed that coin to eat. He was a rock gnome, short enough to hide behind a fence post, and he carried a leather satchel stuffed with pages. He had walked to this village to sell a tale to its innkeeper. He never got the chance. Smoke rose over the rooftops, and screaming came with it. Orcs poured through the gate. They were tall, green, and heavy with axes. The village men grabbed pitchforks and spears and pushed toward the fighting. That left the small ones behind. Orlin saw a cluster of children pressed against a wall, and three women trying to shield them with their arms. He did the only thing he knew. He ran to them. "Come with me," Orlin said. "Quiet. Stay low." A woman stared at him. "You're a gnome. What can you do?" "I know where to hide," he said. "Do you have a better plan?" She did not. Orlin led them along the wall, away from the smoke. He had passed an old root cellar on his way in, set into a slope behind the houses. Its stonework was cracked and green with moss, and its wooden door hung crooked. Forgotten places made good hiding places. He had written that line once, in a story. Now he needed it to be true. An axe thudded into a wall behind them. A child cried out. Orlin pulled the crooked door open and waved them in. The children scrambled down the worn steps into the dark. The women followed. Orlin counted them as they passed. Nine children. Three women. "Down under the floorboards," Orlin whispered. He had felt loose boards with his boot on the way down. Beneath them was a crawl space, low and tight. "Small ones first. Nobody makes a sound." They squeezed into the hidden space. Orlin dragged an old barrel over the boards to hide the seam. Then he sat with his back to the door and held his breath. Boots crunched outside. An orc grunted. The crooked door swung open, and light fell across the empty cellar. Orlin pressed himself into the shadow behind a shelf. The orc saw stone, dust, and nothing worth its time. It spat and left. Orlin waited a long time. The screaming faded. The fighting moved off, then stopped. When he finally lifted the boards, the children blinked up at him, alive and whole. But when the women climbed out and looked toward their homes, they wept. The village was burning. The men who had defended it did not come back. These children had no houses now, no parents, no bread. Orlin looked at nine frightened faces. He had come here to earn coin for eleven mouths. He had saved twelve more, and every one of them would now look to him.