The few months were among the most satisfying days that Simon had ever known. He’d spend a few days on the road helping to defend the Barony from some monster or ahen he’d e home to spend weeks with his wife as they slowly turheir strauation into a life together.

  She was never happy to see him leave, but she was always overjoyed to see him e home, and that was enough for him. Little by little, they made a thousand minor touches that slowly turheir life from bearable to amazing. Simon learo redo the pster walls, and though he never quite mastered the brickwork, the man he hired did a good enough job that Freya never pined about smoke while she was cooking again.

  It seemed like every time he left Crowvar, he came back with some souvenir. When they rousted a of bandits just before the first snow, Simon chose to take a of stolen silverware as his prize from that tidy little horde. After that was gnoll raiders, where he found a lovely neckce for Freya, which she swooned over. In the spring, he was called upon to defeat an actual goblin iion and then to put down a tax rebellion. In the former case, he finally found a lovely spinning wheel in a house where the octs had been murdered. Ier, he actually chose to give a few gold s from his stash away to resolve the situation peacefully when he decided that the Baron was in the wrong.

  He didn’t want to spend those s, of course. He khey’d never get that sort of windfall again. However, his only other option was to crush the skull of the headman and hang every poor bastard without a to their name or join them and overthrow the Baron. Simon was fairly sure he could do the tter, but the chaos that would have been introduced into his life would have been awful. He needed peace to enjoy this time with Freya more than he needed a couple of gold s anyway.

  He felt like both of them were improving and growing closer all the time, which made their time apart that much more unbearable. While she learo spin yarn and knit it into a bo repce the threadbare ohat had barely got them through winter, he focused on other things that were almost as important.

  Simohe winter getting halfway det with his long bow and f the men he fought beside so often to train to work together a little better. Quite frankly, he thought their performance was a little embarrassing because everyone used a different on and style. Still, it took forever to improve that situation. He doubted they’d have even made the effort if they didn’t secretly call him the miracle worker behind his babsp;

  That was a rumor he’d tried to quash, but it had only grown sihat first fight. Even the Baron had pulled him aside to ask if it was true that he had magical healing powers. Simon had learhe hard way that the more he de, the more they believed. Now he just ig and tried not to add more fuel to the fire. Still - it was hard to do that when you watched someone bleeding out otlefield and knew you could save them with a few whispered words.

  These days he tried to heal just the internal part of the wound. That way, he left it bleeding but no longer life-threatening to aly suspi. However, even with that little trick, people still noticed that of all the Baron’s patrols, his routinely came back with the fewest casualties. So, they tried things his racticed things like shield walls and short bows, and by spring, he had a halfway capable fighting forbsp;

  By spring, everythi like it was starting to fall into a routine for the first time since he’d ehe pit. That was wheold him that she regnant.

  “Really? Are you sure?” he asked. That arently the wrong answer because after she stopped g, she wouldn’t speak to him for hours.

  That night they had a fight, and he apologized, but he wasn’t really sure what he ologizing for. He was the oh his mind blown, after all. He was only thirty, after all. Was he even ready to be a dad? It wasn’t a versation he’d ever pnned on having in his life. Still, eventually, he acted excited enough to pcate her while he processed his own feeling on the subjebsp;

  Simon tried to look on the bright side. This was among the smallest curveballs Heldes could have thrown him. It was only a few days ter that they heard the hat the orcs were ing.

  Two days after Simon got the Baron to agree to let him take some time off from the field, a messenger came to let them know that a war band of orcs had been sighted in the east and seemed to be heading this way. For the st month, they had been dealing with increased taur activity, and suddenly everything snapped into pce: the taurs were moving further west and waring with the humans because the orcs were dispg them. It was grim news, and though the lord of Crowvar kept it a secret for as long as he could so as not to cause a panic, the panic still came when refugees fleeing the path of danger arrived in the walled town.

  “Are we going to leave?” Freya asked. “They say that the horde has thousands of warriors. There’s no way anyone could defend against that.”

  “If everyone is saying something, it’s almost certainly wrong,” Simon sighed, slumping into bed with her. He expihat the reality was somewhere between dozens and hundreds of orc warriors. While that was still enough to kill 3 times their weight in men, Crowvar had more than enough men that could hold a sword or a crossbow to fend them off.

  In truth, Simon was more than a little worried. Not just for his wife but also for his unborn child, that was just starting to grow inside her. He couldn’t leave, though. The road hadn’t been a good pce when it was just the two of them, and there was no way they’d be able to manage as her body began to swell with life.

  He didn’t tell her any of that, though. Instead, he told her he would think about it while they fell asleep. His mind was already made up, though, and in the m, he went before the Baron to suggest a pn that was a feverish bination of various a and fantasy movies he’d seen.

  “Sire, we must defeat this army, but the only pce we hope to do so is here. We must let them e here and even lure them here if necessary, and then we must break them against the eastern walls,” Simon said as passionately as he could.

  “The eastern walls, you say? And why is that?” the Baron asked. “My son thinks we should be prepared to retreat to the tower and wait for them to lose i. Rumors say their army is too big to hold batil the t or even the King sends reinforts.”

  Simon carefully expihat the orcs moved like a wave of locusts and that they carried no supplies with them, so they could not stay in one pce for ah of time. Then he expined his pn. “They will attack from the east because that is the dire they e from, and they will attack at night because all green skins hate the light, but we will be ready. They have no siege engines or sg dders, so we will lihe walls with men wielding spears ahem from gaining a foothold while we pepper them with arrows.”

  “Arrows will just make an orgry,” Varten said haughtily. “Don’t you know anything?”

  “I know you bring anything down with enough arrows,” Simon snapped, almost saying bullets by act. “We will hold them in pce, we will weaken them, and then in the m, when they are trying to decide whether to retreat, we will unch our cavalry from the tree line and crush their weakened force against the wall and obliterate it.”

  “What you describe is a fine pn, Simon,” the Baron said wearily, “but it would take many more men than we have, and these orcs will be here within a fht.”

  “More soldiers would be better, but I do not think we oo many,” Simon answered. “We will keep most of them on their horses in the wood while we put a bow or a spear in the hand of every farmer and refugee that’s old enough to wield them, and we shall tell them that they are all that stands between their family and a gruesome death.”

  Eventually, the Baron saw things Simon’s way and agreed to the pn, whifuriated his son. “This pn is reckless to the point of danger. No man will follow it,” Varten decred, st out of the room.

  Simon didn’t actually think he was pletely wrong. It was reckless, but only a little. In the movies, the orcs would have had giant trolls to knock down the walls or catapults, but here they were just savages using salvaged ons to murder and devour everything they could find, and Simon would be ready for them.

  Every day more people pressed into the small town for the slender promise of safety offered by their walls, and every day, the people worked as hard as they could to prepare. Bcksmiths worked te into the night, and Simon drilled the men on the pn. An orc’s main advantage was size and strength, and his pn aimed to deny them both.

  On the day the horde was sighted from the tower, Simon pressed a dagger into Freya’s hand and promised to keep her safe even as she cursed him for not fleeing when they had the ce. She was almost six months pregnant now, and travel beyond the market would have been impossible, but that didn’t matter.

  To her, all that mattered now was that he was safe, but just the opposite was true for him. He was going to keep her safe no matter what. So, with a look of grim determinatiorode out into the twilight to prepare for the long night ahead.

  The orcs reached the walls just before midnight, and Simon called for the first volley of death moments ter. Their supply of arrows was not infinite, of course, but they would make sure that every single shaft ended up spttered in green blood before the end of the night.

  Simon took to the walls sometime past one in the m when one of the defenders was yanked off into the milling crowd below. Most of the orcs tried to climb the walls without success, but some of them had grapples and would hook onto the top bricks, and they did their best t down the a fortification one brick at a time. It was w too, and it hadn’t been part of Simon’s pn. As Varten had mentiohey shrugged off arrows and instead used their massive strength to pull ks of masonry off into their fellows as they sought to lower the walls enough to gairy.

  It almost worked. Despite severing every grapnel he could, they still almost mao create a brea the southern part of the western wall. In the end, it was only dawn that saved them. As false dawn began to light up the eastern horizon, the warriors began to have sed thoughts about whether or not to tihe assault. It was too te for sed thoughts, though, because even as they turo leave, the horn blew, and the cavalry appeared on the far side.

  Simon ordered the gates open then a every man still capable of swinging a sword outside to joihere had been perhaps three hundred orcs at the beginning of the night, and even though there was only half that number now, that would still be too much for the knights that were charging in to save the day. The result was a bloody melee that sted for hours, but for all their strength, the orcs were wounded and exhausted, and in the end, they were wiped out to the st man, inflig only several dozen casualties on their enemies for all their effort.

  Simon was eted. Some of the soldiers wept that m, embrag each other in the greatest victory that part of the world had seen in some time. Simon would have loved to join them. Instead, he hurried home because there was one person he o share this victory with more than anyone else.

  “We did it, baby, we’re safe and…” Simon never fihat sentence as the words died in his throat. Both Freya and Varten turoward the sound of his speech, but it was too te. He’d already seen them kissing.

  It should have been the most joyous day of Simon’s life. For on his life, he was the hero. He’d saved the day. He couldn’t celebrate, though, because when he came home, he opehe door to find his beloved wife in the arms of another man.