Their bickering is cut short by heavy footfalls behind them. They turn to see a large group—no, a group of five very large orcs behind them. All have weapons drawn, expressions ranging from sneering disgust to malicious grins.

“A hunting party,” Achillea whispers.

“And I guess they’re hunting us now,” Mordecai responds nervously. “What do we do?”

The smart thing to do would be to run. Mordecai knows this, as does Achillea, but they also know that she won’t. Disgraced or not, Achillea is still an orc, still headstrong and prideful. She’d rather die than run away.

“I promised I’d get you to the border, remember?”

Mordecai looks at her, confused. Though she’s addressing him, her eyes never stray from the orcs. “…Yeah?”

She nods. “You keep going. I’ll keep these guys off you long enough for you to get away.”

Admittedly, Mordecai hasn’t had the best track record for good ideas this evening, but this one is truly, unbelievably bad. He’s about to say so when suddenly Achillea makes it worse by setting her spear down and removing her armor.

One of the orcs charges forward, giant battleaxe swinging in one hand and a sick grin on his face. Achillea dodges his swing with terrifying speed as she sheds her breastplate, revealing a layer of quilted armor overtop a tunic.

“Are you insane?!” Mordecai yells. He doesn’t doubt that Achillea can hold her own, but against five at once? With no armor?

“I’ll be fine, just go!” she shouts back, shooing him off.

He doesn’t believe her. He draws his knife, fighting down the anxiety. This is different. This isn’t a one-on-one fight, it’s five on two, and their opponents are all huge orcs. He’s not the only one in danger.

As the orc with the axe takes another swing, Mordecai darts forward, slashing at his wrist. Blood sprays as the orc howls in pain, dropping the axe.

He retreats to Achillea’s side and she gives him a look like he’s the crazy one. “What are you doing?! Run!”

“Not without you.”

She grits her teeth in frustration. “I can take them on my own, but I need you to leave. I can’t guarantee your safety.”

The other orcs, who had previously been cheering their friend on and jeering at the two of them, stir at the sight of their friend getting hurt. The one in front removes the sweaty bandana around his head and uses it to wrap his bleeding wrist, then simply picks the axe up with his left hand, not out of the fight yet. The rest heft their weapons and advance threateningly.

“You don’t need to protect me,” Mordecai states bitterly. “I may not be a great fighter like you, but I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself for me.”

“I’m not—”

Whatever she’s about to say is cut off by a huge sword swinging at them around neck height. Achillea jumps back with the same speed from earlier while Mordecai ducks, the blade just barely grazing his hood.

A quick glance at the other three reveals a huge polehammer with a head that looks as heavy as its wielder, another battleaxe, and a bow and quiver, discarded in favor of a nasty-looking morning star with hooked spikes. Mordecai is suddenly grateful for his lack of flesh.

The one with the sword lifts his weapon again. Mordecai skitters back to Achillea’s side. The now-left-handed axe wielder runs toward them, the ground quaking with each heavy bound.

His swing just misses as they use their superior speed to dart behind him, Achillea aiming a hard kick to the back of his knee, bringing him down to a kneel. Mordecai follows it up with a stab to the shoulder. It doesn’t seem to hurt him as much as he’d hoped it would, because he drops his axe again to reach back with his uninjured arm and grab his wrist.

In a few short seconds, Mordecai’s world is turned upside-down and sideways before a bone-rattling thud vibrates through his body. It takes him a few seconds to shake the disorientation and he realizes he’s on his back, looking up at the stars.

He also realizes that they’re being surrounded. The right-handed axe wielder is circling up on his left, while Morning Star and Sword advance on Achillea from behind. Hammer retrieves Lefty’s axe and hands it back to him.

“A boneman?” one of them asks. Apparently, the throw knocked Mordecai’s hood away from his face, too. Sword, the one from the inn, sneers at them again. “Bad enough yer gettin’ cozy with an elf, but an undead one?”

Mordecai clambers to his feet, anger coursing through his being. “I am not an elf!”

Sword looks him over. “You sure about that?”

That makes Mordecai pause. There’s very little he’s sure about regarding his past life, but one thing he was certain of was that he was human. He’d never had reason to doubt it. Now he’s not sure why he was so certain.

“Nah, if ‘e was an elf, he’d be pointier,” Righty says, rubbing his chin.

Sword raises a heavy brow. “You think so?”

“Seen enough skulls I think I kin tell the diff’rence.”

A shadow moves in Mordecai’s peripheral vision and he moves before he even registers the hammer. Stupid; getting distracted again over something so trivial.

He may not remember what his face looked like, but if he remembers being human then he probably was. He files that information away as ‘more undead weirdness’.

Speaking of which, that hammer is triggering some kind of memory that he doesn’t have time to dwell on as he dodges it again. Across the way, he can see Achillea dodging out of Lefty and Morning Star’s reach, being pushed back toward the tree line. It’s not looking good for them.

Achillea suddenly growls and darts between the two, running toward him. She barely dodges a swing from Hammer, then grabs Mordecai around the neck and takes off down the road.

“What are you doing?!” he yells, shocked.

Achillea doesn’t answer. Instead, she winds back and throws him as far as she can. Mordecai sails through the air for a frighteningly long time, tumbling over loose rocks and kicking up dust as he hits the ground rolling. When he looks up, he’s a few dozen yards away from Achillea, who has stopped and turned back to face the orcs.

“I’m tired,” she announces, loud enough for him to hear. It’s also loud enough for the hunting party to hear, as they’re closer to her than he is, so he thinks she should probably keep her mouth shut. What she says next, though, is completely unexpected.

“I don’t know how well I’ll be able to control myself, so run.”