COTTONCROW'S CRY – CHAPTER 13
Gorath felt like one of those heroes from ancient times, those sang in the folklore songs, courageously facing foes much stronger than themselves.
He had told his family that he would be standing guard over Samuel, but silently he was telling them that they needed not worry, because he would make sure that no harm ever came to them.
His mother was sick, touched by the Bruisenbite little more than three days ago, and the idea of losing her was killing his father. If he was successful that night, both would be saved.
The cart and horse had been exactly where Samuel told him that they would be and the fact that most of the torches burning in the streets had died away, plunging the village in darkness, seemed like good signs. Mother Nature helped those who were rightfulness.
Silently he made his way to the back window of the house where they had allowed that creature to enter. The soft light inside the room framed the wooden closed windows in a halo of amber. He knocked only once, holding his breath until he was sure that it was indeed Samuel who would answer his call.
The window didn't take long to be opened, casting a square of light in the dark alley.
"All is ready?" Samuel's voice whispered to the night.
"Aye," the man whispered back. He had positioned the cart directly beneath the window and was now holding the horse, so that the animal wouldn't move from that spot or make any noise. To be heard by the other guards at that point would be the end of their plans.
A pair of booted feet appeared through the window, quickly followed by the rest of the elf's body, landing inside the wood cart with a soft thud. Samuel followed suit.
"Are you sure that your presence won't be missed? They must suspect nothing, so that we can be far from here by the time that they discover us gone."
The guard smiled, the gesture lost in the dark because the healer could not see his face. He pointed to the steps of the house nearest to them. The burning point of a smoking pipe flashed red every so often, like a beacon signalling the man's inhalations.
For a fleeting moment, Samuel thought the man had betrayed him and had called the dwarf back from the forest.
"Me cousin will stand for me… in the darks, we look alike enough," he reassured the healer.
"Good," Samuel said, breathing easier. "Let us be off then!"
Gorath nodded and, carefully whispering to the horse, guided him away from the house, waving goodbye to his cousin.
Ooooooo
They moved like wraiths in the dead of the night, vanishing amidst the tree trunks as soon as they reached the forest's edge. Once protected by the darkness of the foliage, Gareth risked climbing to the driver's seat and speeding the horse's trout. He knew that the group of guards the dwarf had led in to that same forest could return at any time, and he didn't want to risk a chance meeting between them.
How the animal found his way through the forest's paths the guard couldn't imagine, for the darkness was so thick that he barely saw the horse in front of him. He was just glad that the animal knew his way well and had no need for his instructions.
Sooner than what he had calculated, they arrived at their destination. The ancient ruins.
"We've arrived."
Samuel pushed back the blanket that concealed him and the elf at the back of the cart and leaped to the ground. The guard, he could see, had already started to lid some of the hidden torches around the old stones, trying to push away some of the blackness of the night. Still, the air of imminent doom that seemed to pour from the structure itself refused to dim and in fact, seemed more pressing under the light than it had in the dark.
The healer smiled as he saw the man busying himself around the place. He had been so easy to fool. When that man had been left alone to stand guard over him, an escape plan had formed inside Samuel's head. Playing with all the doubts that he knew the villagers were still bound to have about what had happened, the healer had made his move.
He told the guard about Bomieth's lack of judgement, of how the dwarf, helped by the elf, had managed to trick the old man in to believing that fool' story about him killed another man and about spoiled water. True, he had tried to kill the old man, but it had been a gesture that weighted deeply on his heart, one that he had been forced to take in order to safe his life and the lives of everyone in Cottoncrow.
"You see," he explained the captive guard, "there is still a chance to save us all, but Bomieth wouldn't let me act on it, blind as he is by these strangers. I can only hope, for the good of us all, that you are smarter than him, that you are not blind to the events happening in our midst… that you will help me save Cottoncrow!"
The guard had been mesmerized by the healer's words, knowing deep inside that he was right, of course, and that, if left in Bomieth's hands, their fate would be a grim one. He would save his parents, no matter the consequences for himself. And that thought alone made him feel like a hero.
Once he was sure that the guard was on his side, Samuel laid out the plan that he had quickly elaborated, explaining him that they would need to take the elf back to the place of his ancestors and there kill him. That alone would send the curse of the Bruisenbite away from their homes. Only that would save the lives of all that were infected.
The guard had no doubts of the importance of what they were setting out to do, but the how they would achieve it left him filled with dread. If the healer was being held prisoner in that house and the elf stood so far away from them, under heavy guard, how would they manage to snatch him away?
Samuel had merely smiled and assured him that all would be well. Soon, very soon, they would arrive to lead him to the elf. And when all happened exactly as Samuel had said, the guard saw in it a manifestation of the healer's power of telling the future.
Samuel saw inevitability.
Oooooooooooo
"Where should we put him?" The guard asked Samuel, easily carrying the unresponsive body in his arms.
"There, by that tree," the other man said after awhile, pointing at a random trunk. His plan had worked so perfectly until now that he felt the need to calm his enthusiasm, or else he might ruin everything by rushing things. One small misstep at that point and all would be lost.
He patiently waited until the guard had secured the elf to the tree with the ropes he had carried there. Only then did he speak.
"Come… I need your help inside the tower," he called to him. "Last I was here I left some utensils there that will prove of use now."
Gareth followed obediently, making sure that the elf had no chance of running away. The creature had his eyes closed and a pale, sweaty look about him that made him look dead already, but even that was not enough to assure him that the elf wouldn't attack him as soon as he turned his back.
He had been a guard for time enough to think that his senses were a little more tuned to danger than most people. An uncomfortable feeling at the base of his neck would not leave him be, telling him that something was not right. He looked around nervously, searching for the source of danger, but other than the unconscious elf, only Samuel was there.
"Aye, I come!" He ran to the healer, already waiting for him at the door of the single tower. Inside the darkness was heavier than any he had ever seen.
Oooooooooooooooooo
Time doesn't seem to move at all when no one's there to watch. Instead, it leaps from place to place, to wherever it has an audience, going faster or slower, depending of his viewers' needs, having fun in contradicting them.
In the circle formed by the fallen walls of the ancient elven dwelling, time had stopped, for its only viewer was paying it no attention. Inside the tower, however, it was running faster and faster towards the raising sun. For one person in particular, time had reached its end.
A glom brightness that spread monochromatic shades all over the forest, had started to leap over the horizon when Samuel exited the tower, alone and wearing clothes that were not his own. Black smoke followed him, growing in intensity as his steps led him further and further away from his last murder.
Inside the old stones, the shadow of a man could be guessed at. A man that had compared himself to the ancient heroes, forgetting how often tragic those stories were.
The guard had served his purpose, to pass for a dead Samuel, his burned body too disfigured to be thought otherwise. In his hand Samuel had been careful enough to place the rune stones that all knew to be his, so that there would be no doubt left for those who eventually found the body. The change of clothes had been a mere precaution.
Samuel moved with determined steps towards the unconscious elf, wondering if it would be safe to just leave him there or waste more time trying to find someplace to hide him. The horse, still pulling the cart, was no where to be seen, most probably having wondered back to Cottoncrow once the smell of smoke had reach him.
The healer figured that the villagers and the dwarf would take some time to figure where they were, if they managed at all. A day, at most, giving him plenty of time to find another sort of transportation for the elf and him. Their final destination was at the bottom of the mountains and on foot it would take him too long. Plus the elf didn't look like he would be moving on his own any time soon, and his presence was fundamental for Samuel's plan.
The contingency plan that he had set aside, confidante that there would be no need for it. The plan that he was only to use if all else failed. The plan that was now his only guarantee that he would not walk away from Cottoncrow with empty hands.
Samuel could only smile at the brilliance of it. It was almost as if the future had indeed revealed itself to him.
Some of the fishermen dwellings weren't that far from where he was, and he knew that most of them had either a horse or a donkey to pull their carts when they went to the market, to sell their fish.
No knowing how long it would take him to return, Samuel decided that it was best to leave the elf where he couldn't be easily seen, in the far chance that a lost soul happen to pass those parts. It took him some time to untie the knots that the guard had fastened around the elf, so tight they were. If nothing, the man had been detailed in his obligations, Samuel thought with a sarcastic smile.
Free from the ropes, the elf's body fell free to the ground. The healer grabbed him by the legs, dragging the elf further inside the ruins, where the opening of the old tunnel stood. He left him near the opening, covered by the foliage of the bushes and trees around.
With one last look back, to make sure that the elf was indeed well hidden, Samuel left to steal himself a horse.
Ooooooooo
Gimli's first reaction had been based solemnly on instinct. He wanted to grab a few torches and go on pursuit the very instant that he found Legolas gone. The cart's tracks found beneath the back window left no doubt about which had been Samuel's escape rout. The depressions cutting deep in the dirt were still fresh, telling them that they had been made by a cart heavy with load and that they had been made not so long ago.
To the concerned filled mind of Gimli, that was more information than what he needed. He and a group of others followed the tracks through the village's dark streets, but when the group of hunters reached to forest's edge, the track was completely lost.
A wild idea of entering the forest anyway, and search it from one end to the other, played in Gimli's head for a minute or two, until the reasonable arguments that both Bomieth and Alumna presented to him won.
He knew that it was too dark to go on, and that in a forest that big, they would need every clue and track that Samuel might have left behind to find them. Still, it did not seat well with the dwarven warrior to just let Samuel free to widen the gap separating him from his friend.
Forced to wait, he couldn't, however, allow himself to rest. Over and over the same image played inside Gimli's head. He could see himself opening the door and looking at an empty bed room, left only with a blazing fireplace and slept-in cot. Pieces of white linen, reddened by blood, lay discarded near the fire. Of the wounded elf and the man that had been there to heal him, there was no trace.
The dwarf knew that Samuel would try something like that and yet he had let himself be caught like a toddler. He also knew that the healer couldn't have done it with out help from someone outside.
The first suspects to his eyes had been the owners of the house, but he had quickly discarded that idea. The woman had helped Legolas and had seemed truly affected by his suffering. Her husband, on the other hand, was not so fond of the situation, but the house was so small that he couldn't have done anything without the old lady or one of the guards noticing.
Which left him with the guards and a whole village of suspects.
Fuming with rage and frustration, Gimli persuaded Bomieth to gather all the guards that had been posted at the house. They were now facing him, lined up on the empty street, like a strange nocturnal parade.
"One of you knows something about what happened here tonight," Bomieth started, looking each man in the eye. "Someone helped that villain escape and, either the lot of you are very poor guards to not have seen anything or you're helping him and are traitors!"
Even with their pride as guards spiked, the men stood silent. Bomieth had never talked to them like that and they were not too happy that he had chosen this time to do it. They had been through very difficult times and their leader had been no leader of the sorts during that period. Their respect for his authority was now more of a formality than the real thing.
Still, they too were disappointed with themselves. The guard's position in the village held some status with it, and each and every man that wore the guard's robes was proud of it. It didn't seat well with any of them to know that Samuel had so easily fooled them all and had managed to escape under their watch.
One of the guards took a step forward, attracting the attentions of all.
"Master Bomieth," he started nervously, "don't won't to be pointin' the finger on the innocent but… but Gorath never answered the call."
"Gorath?" Gimli's asked, looking at the guards and trying to recall a face that he we knew almost impossible to connect to that name.
"Where was this Gorath supposed to be?" Bomieth asked the guard that had decided to help them.
"Outside the house, master Bomieth. He'd been guardin' the healer and when he brought him here he decided to stay and give us a hand…"
"As any of you seen Gorath since that time?" Gimli asked.
He was answered by several nodding heads and a few 'no's.
"Mayhap he went to his home?" Bomieth offered hopefully. Inside, however, he knew that they had most likely found their traitor, much as it pained him to acknowledge that it had been one of his trusted guards indeed.
The old man, Alumna and Gimli quickly covered the distance separating them from Gorath's house. He, as they knew it would be, was not home. Gone to guard the healer, his father had said, even thought he could not understand why the healer would need guarding over in the first place.
He wasn't pleased to know that his son was missing, along with Samuel and the elf.
The group tried, without success, to make the man tell them of any place to where his son might have gone, what reasons he might have had to do such thing, but the man didn't knew the answer to any of those questions.
What he did know was that his wife was sick and that with no healer and no hope, she was mostly sure to die.
His son was a good boy, the pride of his family especially after he joined the guard's lot, and if he had indeed done any of the things that he was blamed for, he had done it for a good reason, the father was sure.
"Find them two," the man said, "and you'll find me son, innocent!"
The man closed the door on their faces, giving no more chance to further questions.
Gimli felt a warm hand on his shoulder and turned to find a defeated looking Bomieth. Alumna didn't look much better and the dwarf could only imagine his own expression. It had been a long day, a day that had seemed to last for weeks, and they were all exhausted.
"I have to leave you on your own, master Gimli," the old man said, looking sincerely sad by the prospect. "There is much to do, now that we know what is making us ill, and people need to be warned about it, the sick must be taken care of…"
The man sounded so apologetic that Gimli couldn't force himself to be angry at him. The old man had other obligations, he knew that. Obligations that would save lives. He was trying to save just one.
"I'll leave a group of four guards with you, and any more that I can send away from their duties, but, for now, there is nothing more that I can do."
The warm hand left Gimli's shoulder and Bomieth hurried away, swallowed by the dark streets. For the first time in his long life, Gimli felt small.
He looked at his clenched fists. The right one was still holding a tiny blossom of the plant he had collected from the forest. The force of his closed hand had squash it beyond recognition, leaving a sweet, slightly fruity, smell on his palm. Somehow, it reminded him of his mother, of the way she smelled when she was cooking.
"I'll stay and help you," Alumna said, still at his side, conscious one extra pair of eyes would do little difference.
Sacking away his insecurities, Gimli realized that a smaller group searching for Legolas meant only one thing: they had to search harder and longer.
They also had to wait for the morning to arrive.
"Come, let us find a good pair of guards to aid us in the morning."
Just as they were turning the corner in to another street, Bomieth's angry shouts reached their ears.
Ooooooooooo
Some believe that Nature possesses a pulse of its own, a dull pounding of undertones that few can hear.
Only once every so often do we get glimpses of its presence, like a well hidden secret slipping away from the shadows, revealed by chance by the flickering of a feeble flame.
Most of the times we see it, even if we do not know what we are looking at. The rustling of the leafs in the tree tops, sounding almost like whispered words that we can't put together; the wild animal that crosses our path and stares us in the eyes with such intelligence, daring us to guess what he's thinking; the fish deep beneath the water line that make no sound and yet manage to escape its hunters in flocks, synchronized swimmers of vacant looks; a whole world that exists beneath our perception, luring us in to believing that the pulse is never there and that the glimpses that we've had were mere illusions.
From the moment they stepped on the lands of Arda, the elves had learned to embrace and listen carefully to that pulse, knowing of its importance and value. Soon, they could no longer tell it apart from the beating of their own hearts, Nature's pulse and theirs, pounding in the same tempo, sons of the same mother.
Because they were a part of Nature and Nature was a part of them, the first elves had no difficulty in understanding all the living things around them. From the breathing part of Arda they learned many things, and much knowledge they passed on as well.
Only rocks would not communicate with them and the elves could not tell if it was because they couldn't or because they wouldn't. All other could not hide their content and joy at having the First Born among them.
The trees in particular, for they were more bored than some, it had been as if spring had come to stay all year. Each elf was to them like a small, private sun, casting their inner light through every forest they walked. The trees tried the harder to communicate with the First Born and when some indeed learned from them how to speak, all the others rejoiced.
Oooooo
The trees surrounding the place where Legolas had been hidden by Samuel were old, older than those ruins, older even than the First Born sleeping over their roots.
They could only judge the passing of time by counting the coming and going of their new leafs. Even so they knew that many leafs had fallen since last time they had had an elf among them.
The last ones had been distant, paying them no attention at all. They had tried to talk with them, but they would not listen. Their hearts were black as the night and their minds filled with evil. Given the option, the trees would've preferred to leave than stand the presence of those elves.
At some point that neither could recall, they had stopped trying. They no longer wanted to understand what those elves were saying, because it often scared them to listen. They forgot how to talk and they lost all hope of ever finding another of the First Born to teach them.
When this one had wondered in to the forest, hope had been reborn anew. Hope and fear.
The trees had been so happy with the elf's presence in the forest that the men's planning had almost escaped their notice. They had tried to warn the elf about the danger, they all had shouted for him to escape, but they could no longer recall how to speak. The elf had sensed their distress, but by then it had been too late.
How hard it was, to be so ancient, to know so much and yet be able to do so little. When the elf and the dwarf had been taken prisoner by the men that lived now in those parts, the trees had whished that they were Ents and not just trees, so that they could rip their roots from the earth and use them as legs.
So much hate and cruelty they had witness in their midst. People had killed and been killed under their leafs. Men had bled over their roots and screamed in pain when no one but the trees could hear them.
And the trees had stood and bare all the events, silent witnesses that neither judge nor rule. Their silent protest went unanswered and all they could was stand and reach their branches to the sky in despair.
Hope and fear.
They had feared for the fate of the First Born then, but they had hoped to see him again.
The passing birds and wind had told them pieces and bits of what was happening in the homes of en, but the birds had little patience for ways of the two legged beings and the wind was always running, so the trees never heard much.
And now he was there again, brought to their midst by a killer. The trees had felt, more than witnessed, the hideous actions taking place inside the ancient tower. They feared that the elf would be next on the killer's plans, but they could not guess.
The killer was gone for now, but they knew that he would return. They called to the First Born, trying to remember what they had once known and how to wake him.
He was as wood-elf, the trees soon realized, for his connection with them was stronger and easier to reach than with any other elf.
Inside this one they could see their sisters and brothers from a great forest far from there, bigger than their own, a green forest that had been in the dark for long but was now free once again.
They could sense the need of this elf to return to the forest he called home, how he longed to, for once, see his beloved forest shine with life and joy, free of shadow of ancient evil things, free from giant spiders and necromancers. Most of all, they could feel his pain at the thought that he might never see his forest again.
If the trees possessed a heart of flesh, it would have bled for the sadness they could feel in this elf. And in the midst of their sadness, the trees realized that there was something they could do, just this one time.
To any watching it, it would have seemed as if the ground had opened and swallowed the elf. The trees opened their roots to the needs of the elf, offering him water and nourishment, allowing him to soak his being in to their essence. Together, they went back to the time before time, when they had indeed been just one and when the roots of the elf ran so deep inside the earth that they almost touched its core.
To any watching, it was as if a sudden wind had wiped across those trees, rustling the leafs and making their branches dance. Inside, the trees where exuberant, more alive than they had ever been, finally doing what they had always longed to do.
They were intervening, they were interacting, they were saving the existence of one of the First Born and they were assuring that he would return to his forest, to his home.
When the sun finally rose in the horizon, the trees bent out of the way of its rays, allowing light to reach the ground of the forest, to places it hadn't shine on for the longest of times. The ancient ruins gained a different colour, stone highlighted by the greens of the moss along its walls, the yellow of the fungus and the white of a male figure that slept beneath the trees' canopy. Slowly bathed by the sun, the figure begun to stir.
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I can't believe it has been 5 months since my last update! Life has been hectic, I can tell you. Wont make any promises about how long I will take to send the next chapter but, as things can't get more complicated than they are now, I'm sure it wont take another 5 months.
To all of you that still have the patience to be reading this story, my thank you!
It's almost 6 a.m. here where I'm posting this, so you can see that I'm making an effort here… please do the same and send me a review :D