Chapter 354: Chapter 338 – A New Life

 

“One could indeed never guess where life might take them.” - Old folk saying.

Seasons changed from one to another in the natural order, and the Bloodfang Clan soon set out and returned towards their ancestral lands to the south after a winter in the company of the Greyscales. Much like Aideen had predicted in the past, there were no further movements from the human land to their south, as the prairie welcomed a few years of uninterrupted peace.

 

Aideen and Celia mostly stayed with the Bloodfangs over those years, but they also occasionally traveled to other tribes, at times on Andromarche’s request as she wished to help the few other former knights who had arrived at the same conclusion she had, and had chosen to remain amongst the orcish clans. Over the years, with their help and Andromarche as an example, the others who were in the same situation slowly acclimatized themselves with life on the prairies, and came to accept their new lives.

 

Many of them even found companionship, if perhaps not the sort of courtship and love they had probably expected from their childhood tales, started a relationship, and even created their own families with the locals. In that way, the former knights embraced the fact that the prairies would be their new home, likely for the remainder of their lives.

 

Andromarche was no exception, and was one of the few who had married one of the orcs in their fashion, as she grew close to Dagna over the years. The two even had two half-orcish children from their relationship, and the former knight had fully adapted to her new life in the prairies. She was not the only one either, as some of her former compatriots had also followed her example amongst other clans.

 

Yet the peace they enjoyed was not destined to last.

 

One early spring ten years later, a messenger bird flew into the Bloodfang encampment. The clan happened to have just visited their old allies the Greyscale again in the north that year, after a gathering of clans the year prior. The bird flew straight towards Orica’s tent in the middle of the encampment, which meant only one thing.

 

It was a situation that was considered enough of an emergency to make use of the messenger birds.

 

Sure enough, the message carried by the messenger bird told of another invasion from the south, of a larger group of humans compared to the previous one, and called for a mass gathering of the Clans. Since the orcs who lived in the south were better prepared this time, they managed to escape from the encroaching human army without being harmed, as they had left upon their scouts noticing the army’s approach from afar.

 

The effect was immediate. Not only the Bloodfangs, but also the Greyscales mustered their hunters and warriors and marched down to the south in tandem. When the news came, Aideen happened to be visiting Andromarche and Dagna in their tent and was playing with their five year old daughter, and the news had caught them by quite a bit of surprise.

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Of particular note, she noticed how Andromarche paled visible at the news. It was no real surprise that she acted that way. The former knight had spent the past decade trying to build herself a new life in the prairie, and now people from her homeland came into the prairie once more as the aggressor. She had every right to worry about the situation.

 

Fortunately, the orcs of the prairie thought differently.

 

To them, she had become one of their own when she decided to stay all those years ago. Nobody treated her differently despite the news, and when she asked to be allowed to fight alongside Dagna, the reply she received was a confused look and a return question of why she ever thought she wouldn’t be allowed to do that.

 

As such Andromarche had marched to the south alongside the Clan of orcs who had accepted her into their midst and had effectively become her new family, her new home in life. Her armor had long been recycled into other things by the Clan, so she donned the same sort of armor the orcs mostly wore, made of thick animal hides layered over each other. It was nowhere near as protective as her suit of plate armor, but it was a decent enough protection against arrows and cuts.

 

Her sword on the other hand was the one possession the orcs had returned to her after she had made her decision back then. They also valued their weapons greatly, and as such only saw it fit to return her weapon to her no matter what choice she would have made. The blade of good steel felt comfortable in her hands, its grip an all too familiar sensation, as the former knight had never really given up on her skills and kept training even over the years.

 

After all, once she integrated into the Clan she quickly realized how the orcs respected those who had the courage to stand and fight for themselves, and that it was the reason she was captured alive rather than unceremoniously finished off like so many others. It was a reputation she all too gladly embraced, and in fact the knight in her rejoiced at having such a large group of all too eager opponents to test herself with whenever she wished to.

 

The thought of having to fight people from her homeland made her feel somewhat conflicted… for a brief moment. It had not taken her long to steel her resolve to fight. After all, the Clan was where her family was. It was her home. She would fight in its defense and if her former compatriots chose to attack, then she would take their lives for the audacity.

 

To her relief, when the clan reached the gathering point by Greentusk territory two weeks later - they had the warriors march on their mounts while leaving the rest with the Greyscale non-combatants - Andromarche met many of her former compatriots, who had made the same decision as she had. The few who were missing had been those who decided that they were unable to turn their blades to their former people, and had instead stayed behind to guard the clans they had joined.

 

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