Chapter 5 THE WARRIOR WITH FIRE-RED HAIR

ETHAN'S POV

The impact threw me backward.

An orc warrior slammed into my shield with the force of a charging bull. I crashed to the ground, losing my sword. The warrior raised his axe to finish me.

Pure instinct saved me. I rolled left. The axe buried itself in the dirt where my head had been a second before.

I scrambled to my feet, grabbed my sword, and swung wildly. The blade caught the orc's arm. He roared in pain and swung back. I ducked. Barely.

This was nothing like training. Nothing like the practice fights with Father or the drills at camp. This was chaos. Pure, screaming chaos.

All around me, soldiers and orcs fought and died. Steel clashed against steel. Men screamed. Blood soaked into the ground. The noise was deafening.

"Shield wall!" someone yelled, but the formation had already broken apart.

I blocked another attack, my arms shaking from the force. The orc warrior was twice my size and three times as strong. Every strike drove me backward.

I was going to die. Right here. Right now.

Then Marcus appeared from nowhere. He stabbed the orc in the side. The warrior fell.

"Stay close to me!" Marcus shouted over the noise.

We fought back-to-back, trying to stay alive. I stopped thinking about technique or strategy. My body just moved—block, strike, dodge, block again. Survival became everything.

A horn blew somewhere. The orc warriors pulled back slightly, regrouping. Our soldiers did the same.

I stood there gasping, covered in mud and blood. Some of it was mine. Most of it wasn't.

"You okay?" Marcus asked.

I nodded, unable to speak. My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

"First battle is always the hardest," a veteran soldier said, checking his weapon. "You survived. That's what matters."

Survived. But for how long?

The horn blew again. Both armies charged.

I ran forward, screaming to push down the fear. Crashed into the enemy lines. Fought like a desperate animal. Nothing graceful. Nothing heroic. Just pure survival.

That's when I saw her.

Through the chaos, I spotted an orc warrior with fire-red hair fighting three human soldiers at once. She moved like water—fast, smooth, deadly. But what caught my attention was what she was doing.

She was protecting someone.

Behind her, a young orc barely more than a kid sat on the ground, injured and unable to fight. The red-haired warrior kept herself between the boy and the attacking soldiers.

She could have run. Could have escaped and saved herself. Instead, she stood her ground, defending someone weaker.

One of the human soldiers got past her guard and raised his sword to strike the injured boy.

The red-haired warrior spun impossibly fast. She disarmed the soldier with one move, then kicked him away. Hard. But she didn't kill him.

She could have. She had the opening. But she just pushed him back.

"I don't want to hurt you," she said in perfect human language. Her voice was clear and strong. "Go back to your lines. Please."

I froze. She spoke our language. No accent. Perfect grammar. Like she'd grown up speaking it.

Captain Helena's words echoed in my head: "Orcs are savages. They don't value life."

But this warrior was protecting a child. Speaking peacefully. Offering mercy.

One of the human soldiers—a young recruit I didn't know—hesitated. "You... you can talk?"

"I speak five languages," the warrior replied, her guard still up. "I studied at human universities before the war. Now drop your weapons and walk away. There's been enough death today."

The soldiers looked confused. They'd been told orcs were mindless beasts. This warrior shattered everything they believed.

Then Marcus appeared, running toward the scene with his sword raised. He hadn't heard the conversation. He just saw an orc and three human soldiers.

"Marcus, wait!" I shouted.

But he was already attacking.

The red-haired warrior blocked him easily. She moved like she was dancing, dodging his strikes without effort. Marcus was good—one of our best fighters—but she was better.

She disarmed him in three moves, then swept his legs. He hit the ground hard. She stood over him with her sword raised.

I saw Marcus's eyes go wide with fear. He was dead. She was going to kill him.

But she didn't.

She lowered her sword and stepped back. "Your friend is brave but foolish," she said, looking at me. "Tell him to stay down."

"Marcus, don't move!" I yelled.

The warrior turned back to the injured young orc. "Can you stand?" she asked in a different language. The boy nodded and struggled to his feet.

That's when I saw the archer.

A human archer on a nearby rock, aiming directly at the red-haired warrior's back. She didn't see him. She was focused on helping the injured boy.

I didn't think. Didn't plan. Just acted.

"Look out!" I screamed.

The warrior spun. Saw the archer. Dodged to the side as the arrow flew past where her head had been a second ago.

She stared at me with absolute shock in her eyes. They were green, I noticed. Bright green like forest leaves.

"You... you warned me?" she asked, her voice full of confusion.

"Yes," I said, not understanding why I'd done it either.

"Why would a human save an orc's life?" She looked at me like I was a puzzle she couldn't solve.

Before I could answer, more soldiers arrived. The warrior grabbed the injured boy and started pulling him away.

"Wait!" I called.

She paused, looking back at me. For a moment, our eyes met across the battlefield. Something passed between us. Understanding? Recognition? I didn't know.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Kiera," she said. "Kiera Stoneheart. Remember it, Ethan Blackwood."

My blood went cold. "How do you know my name?"

She smiled slightly. "I make it my business to know the names of humans who are different from the others. Who question things. Who notice what doesn't fit."

She knew. Somehow, she knew I'd been investigating the attacks. Knew I had doubts about the war.

"The villages," I said quietly. "The burned villages. Was it really your people?"

Kiera's expression turned sad. "Look around you, Ethan Blackwood. Does this look like a war my people wanted?"

She pulled something from her belt—a small leather pouch. She threw it at my feet.

"Inside is truth," she said. "Evidence. Proof. Read it when you're ready to see what your leaders don't want you to know."

"What are you talking about?" I bent to pick up the pouch.

"The war is a lie," Kiera said simply. "Your people attacked your own villages. Blamed us. Started a war that's killing both our races."

"That's impossible," I whispered, even though I'd suspected the same thing.

"Is it?" Kiera asked. "Then why do you already carry a Silver Covenant badge hidden in your belongings?"

I gasped. How did she know about that?

"We have spies too," Kiera said. "We know about the conspiracy. About Lady Seraphina. About the plans to burn more villages." She hefted the injured boy higher. "Read the documents. Make your own choice about what's true."

More human soldiers were running toward us. Kiera had to go.

"Why give this to me?" I asked desperately. "Why trust a human soldier?"

"Because you saved my life when you didn't have to," Kiera said. "Because you ask questions. Because I think you might be brave enough to face the truth." She started backing away. "And because if good people on both sides don't start working together, this war will destroy us all."

She disappeared into the chaos, supporting the injured young orc. I stood there holding the leather pouch, my mind spinning.

Marcus struggled to his feet beside me. "What just happened? Why did you warn her?"

"I don't know," I said honestly.

"She could have killed me," Marcus said, his voice shaking. "But she didn't. She spared me."

"Yeah," I said quietly. "She did."

The battle raged on around us, but I couldn't focus on it. I could only think about what Kiera had said. About the documents in my hand. About the truth I was supposedly carrying.

A horn blew. The orc army was retreating. We'd won the battle.

But I didn't feel victorious. I felt confused and scared and uncertain about everything.

That night, I sat in my tent while Marcus slept nearby. The leather pouch felt heavy in my hands.

Part of me wanted to throw it away. Pretend this never happened. Follow orders like a good soldier.

But another part—the part that found the Silver Covenant badge, that noticed the organized destruction patterns, that heard Captain Helena planning more village burnings—that part needed to know.

I opened the pouch.

Inside were documents. Maps. Lists. All written in human language.

I started reading by candlelight. With each page, my hands shook harder.

The documents showed village attack reports. Dates. Locations. Details.

But the dates were wrong. All wrong.

According to these papers, Clearwater was attacked two months before the war officially started. Thornhill was attacked three months before. Other villages I'd never heard of—attacked four, five, six months before the king declared war.

The war didn't start six months ago when orcs supposedly attacked Millbrook.

The attacks had been happening for over a year. And if these documents were real, they were all done by humans wearing black armor with silver serpent symbols.

The Silver Covenant had been burning villages and blaming orcs for more than a year, creating "evidence" to justify a war that hadn't existed yet.

This wasn't just a conspiracy. This was planning. Deliberate, long-term planning.

The question that burned in my mind was simple and terrifying:

If the Silver Covenant spent over a year preparing for this war—burning their own people's villages, murdering innocent families, creating false evidence—what was their endgame?

What could possibly be worth all that death and destructio

n?

And more importantly: what would they do to someone like me who now had proof of their crimes?