In which our fish goes for an unexpected swim.
Estel thrusts you from him with a snarl of rage, the whites of his eyes flash as he screams at you… dark shadows flicker through streams of sunlight through the trees as men clamber down the hill… Fuck! Where's Estel? Shit! God damn, fucking arrogant motherfucker. You can't fucking see him. And then down Estel goes beneath the weight of men and with a stab of red light from the setting sun there's a clash of metal so sharp and real you start upward, your eyes wide and staring.
Fuck!
You blink, straining to catch something, anything outside the shadows in which you have hidden yourself.
Nothing.
You lay back down, your heart thumping painfully in your chest.
You hadn't so much gone to sleep as you had passed out. One second you were squirming your way beneath this huge bush with its mounds of tiny leaves and brambles and making a nest for yourself like some kind of very large marsupial from Down Under, and the next you're blinking into the sunlight stabbing at your eyes from where it's bouncing off the water and wondering why your throat burns like you'd just screamed out loud.
God you hope you're alone in here.
Or, failing that, the badgers here are particularly friendly. You know, like Beren and his napping habits snuggled up to… you know what… never mind. You don't really want to think about that story right now.
What the fuck ever. You sniff and wipe at your eyes and face with your sleeve and rub futilely at your ears, your temples all wet and tears pooling in your ears. Where are fucking Qtips when you need them?
Okay. You're awake.
Okay.
Okay.
Fuck.
What's next?
You're just about as stiff and sore as you predicted. You ease onto your back, puzzling your way through the straight-jacket impersonating your blanket, trying to avoid too much rustling of branches and leaves as you do so.
Fuck. Ow.
You stretch out your leg against the spasming muscle and flex your foot. Ow. God. Worst camping trip ever.
Okay. #1: Stretch out the legs before moving around too much. Got it.
#2?
You lay there, assessing your options.
Your bladder is busting, you stomach is protesting it's emptiness, your tongue feels like a wad of cotton in your mouth, and your waterskin is empty empty, empty.
Damn. Fiver and their bad dreams are going to have to leave their nice little burrow and make their way out in the big, bad world without Hazel, aren't they.
Maybe if you flip to your side, you'll find Estel crouched at the entrance to your brambly cave peering in and wondering if that thing he sees sandwiched between roots and limbs of the bushes huddled dark against the ground is you or a really super-confused wombat.
Fuck. He can take care of himself, right? You've not really had the chance to see him in action before, but, shit, he plucked a speeding arrow out of the air and shot it back all in one smooth move like it was all muscle memory unhindered by thought.
Your throat decides to try to throttle you all by itself.
Nope. Can't think about it. There's not one fucking thing you can do about it right now.
Do they have wombats here? Asking for a friend.
You close your eyes and tug a corner of your blanket up over your shoulders, letting the light play against your lids, bright/dark, bright/dark, as the breeze sifts through the bushes and you very slowly and deliberately take in air and let it out. Something flutters and cheeps up and to the left, tugging at whatever berries are growing there and stirring the branches. The river rushes in its bed in the culvert below and smells of damp and fish and wet earth.
No thumping of booted feet. No clash of metal. No voices calling out. Normal forest rustling and the calling of birds. That's all.
Okay.
"Keep to the shadows" and "upstream."
Okay.
Shit.
God damn, Estel, that's one freaking big leap of faith you're asking, here, my man.
Shit. Shit shit shit shit.
Yeah. Not a whole lot of options.
Well, fuck, at least you won't run out of water to drink, if you don't die of dysentery.
You make it out of your hiding place, squirming beneath branches and stopping every few inches to untangle thorns and twigs from your hair and clothing. You emerge sucking on a scratch on the back of your hand, the metallic taste of your own blood sharp in your mouth, staring and scanning about you.
You keep to the shadows. You walk upstream.
And you walk upstream.
And you walk upstream.
Listen. Far be it from you to disparage Estel's people's country. The view is something else. Softly rolling hills lost in a blue haze upon the horizon glimpsed between the trees. The golden beech. The scarlet leaves of the rowan tree in splashes of color against the dark thicket of tree trunks. Green undergrowth of bracken, grasses, and ivy springing from a carpet of fallen leaves and moss covered stones. A bank of fog floating down the river, hovering above it on a cushion of cold air with passing of the morning. The burbling of water as it rushes in its bed of stone and into deep pools swirling against high rising banks. The cool mist clinging to your cheeks. It's pristine and beautiful and super fucking moist.
Moist.
Moist moist moist moist moist.
There once was journey so moist
When the sun would come out you'd rejoice
You opened your mouth
turned your back to the south
And on a petard your own ass you did…
Nah.
Fuck it. Your heart's not really in it.
You keep your feet on this narrow path you stumbled across on the high bank of the river, winding between stands of pines with their trunks softened by a layer of moss. The breeze rising from the river sends needles drifting down to spark bright in the beams of light. You look up dizzily at the swaying canopy high overhead as the trees creak around you.
God. You really should turn back. I mean, Estel's probably long gone and fuck if you know how to track a herd of goats munching their way across great swathes of the countryside much less a single man who can become one with the shadows or the trees or whatever other elvish bullshit he's got going on, but, you know, still.
No. Shit, it's not like he's been afraid of this chief and his gang of men and avoiding them. He's been attacking them all summer all by himself and you didn't know about it then and he was okay. It's not going to magically change just because you actually know what's going on now.
Who made this path, anyway? You duck beneath overhanging limbs of the pines and the path plunges down closer to the edge of the rise over the river so that you're practically wedged up against the hill on one side and open air on the other. You wedge your feet against saplings and the roots of trees clinging to the edge of the high bank, wishing you were, in fact, a wombat, and a bit closer to the ground, and then it's all stone and shale and open air. You worm your way through the exposed roots of a great fallen pine, lying on its side and water roaring and dragging through its branches in the river down below.
You know. Fuck it. You should go back. You left him there. God damn. Half a dozen armed men charging down the hillside upon him, knives and axes and bludgeons out and screaming for his head, and you fucking left him there. Ran like the coward you are. What kind of person does that?
That's it. You're turning back.
No. No. He said go north. You have no fucking clue where anything is. Okay. You know where the Road is. About where it is. But you have no fucking clue where it leads to. You're most likely to wander around in circles until you a) die of thirst, b) die of starvation, or c) get eaten by something else that doesn't want to die of thirst and starvation.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
What if they got him? Like, he's dragged himself into some hollow place beneath a bed of brambles and limbs for cover, his hands clawing at the dirt while he bleeds out. All alone out here? What are his chances? God, that night when you weren't sure if you'd wake up to find him cold and waxy-faced and still. If you never have to see or imagine that again, you'd sing him every fragment of every song you could dredge up from every fucking alcohol soaked karaoke night, every shower in which you crooned off key under the water, every bass line thumping through the walls from your neighbor, and every annoying ad jingle you counted down until you could skip it you could dredge up from the dusty bins of memory. Fuck it, you'd sing him Sponge Bob over and over again just to see the corners of his eyes crinkle up at the absurdity of it.
Agh! Fuck!
Wait.
You halt in the middle of the path. Nothing but saplings and undergrowth and birch trees and the faint rush of the river as the path leads away from the edge of the bank.
You could have sworn you heard something.
What was that?
Shit.
You hear it again, and then rustling and galloping feet tearing through the undergrowth.
Shit! Shit shit shit shit shit!
Fuck! It's getting closer and headed straight for you.
Off you go, leaping into a run, scrambling over stones and packed earth and roots, bracken and grasses whipping at your feet. Fuck being quiet, you need speed.
Where the fuck are you going? God you should get off this path. And, what? Scramble through the thick undergrowth while going uphill? Pull a Katniss? Fuck! Too close! No time no time notime notimenotime!
You duck around a turn in the path, batting away low-hanging twigs at the last second only to slip on the carpet of wet leaves and down you go onto your hip, catching your elbow against the ground.
Ow. Fuck!
You scramble to your hands and feet and launch yourself head-first into the bracken, plunging to a stop when shadows lift over your head and hooves hammer the dirt and leaves about you. You roll over just in time to catch the glimpse of a pale underbelly stretching over you and a riot of bounding backs and twitching ears and dark eyes disappearing into the flick of white tails and skittering of leaves as the herd of deer speed past. And then it's quiet and you can hear little above the roar of water to your right.
Holy fuck!
You collapse back into the bracken, staring at the pale sky far above the trees.
Holy fuck!
You gulp in air and let it out in a long, shaky stream.
You roll over, spitting out bits of leaves and dirt and brushing off your clothes as you turn over to sitting amidst the bracken.
Just great. Wonderful. Fantastic job there. Only thing that could have made that attempt to keep yourself out of danger more pathetic would have been if you had peed yourself.
Which you didn't, by the way. Thanks for asking.
Well, shit.
You stand up and shake the leaf litter off the hem of your cloak, jog your pack back into place, and settle Estel's knife back over your hip from where it still dangles from your belt. Upstream. Here we go. God, you wish you knew what the end -
Fuck!
There he is. You don't know his name, but he's standing there with his hand propped lazily on this hunting horn slung across his front not even a basketball court length's away on the path ahead of you, staring at you where you popped up like you took him by surprise. Fuck! You know him. Big fucker. I mean, you don't know his name, but you've seen him at The Pony before. Some asshole who tripped Nob and then got all pissy when Barliman told him off and sent him packing last spring.
Oh shit! Run, god damn it! Don't just stand there gaping at him! Run! Run run runrunrunrurnrnrjururnrjrurnrnrurnrurn.
And so that's what you do: turn tail and sprint back the way you came. Bounding over tree trunks and rocks, you leap over the roots of the fallen pine like you've just discovered parkour, the blast of asshole's horn sounding behind you and echoing through the trees.
Shit!
God, you have got to get off this path. Deep water swirling below your feet just to your right, steep incline filled with brambles to your left, and the sound of feet pounding up from behind. Shit! Just a little more. You skim along the narrow path, your hand dragging along the incline like you're surfing the edge of the hill like a wave. Just a little more. The path opens out just beyond that curve. Make it there and you can head for the larger trees between the hills and find something, like something you can climb, or someplace you can hide, just something, anything. Just… get off the path, damn it!
Like a quarter of a city block to go and around the curve and - Fuck!
You skid to a halt and start backing up. Shit! Shit shit shit shit!
Another one of those fuckers coming straight at you, trotting down the path on high alert, his eyes scanning up and down and around. His step falters and he grins when he catches sight of you. God damn, fucking idiot! Of course there's more of them! Deer don't run toward the sound of people blundering through the forest, you fucking idiot, they run away from it.
You spin about. Fuck! River. Fuck! Hillside of brambles and stone. Jesus! You try climbing that steep hillside and he'll just pluck you by the heels and drag you back down.
Grinning Asshole #2 saunters down the path toward you and shouts something about giving up cuz you're trapped that's garbled by distance and rushing of the river below, but fuck you if you're going to ask him to repeat it. Not like you're in urgent need of his opinion on your situation.
Okay. Okay. Uhm. Shit. All right. You draw Estel's knife and get a good grip on it.
Ah fuck, here we go. This is so going to suck.
With that, you run full tilt down the path toward Grinning Asshole #2, yelling something incoherent, the sound of your voice trailing along behind you.
And that's when you see them, two more fuckers running up behind him. Shit!
You come in high, screaming your head off about motherfuckers and how dare he and what you're going to do about it and he's laughing and jogging to meet you. Fucker hasn't even pulled out his own knife. He turns about on his heel to block you with his arm, winding up for a blow from his other fist, not even bothering to keep from telegraphing everything, when you drop low at the last second and, tucking your head down, hit him right below the spleen, throwing your full weight at his ribs and grabbing onto his legs in your best impression of a rugby midfielder. And then you're sliding down the embankment in a hail of scree and leaves, riding his body like a snow tube before you both catch air over the river and plunge down down down, your stomach rattling up your throat and getting caught somewhere up around your sinuses.
You hit the water with a slap that knocks the breath out of you and the river snaps closed over your head with a muffled roar. The current spins you around as you flail about trying to figure out which way is up before it spits you out downstream into a set of rapids. You come up gulping air and splashing.
Jesus! Fucking cold. Fucking cold. Fucking cold.
You kick to get your feet floating out in front of you before the river smashes you into a boulder or something, bobbing and riding the current, letting the river drag you downstream while the notes of Asshole #1's horn grow more distant. You round a bend and nearly straight into the branches of a fallen beech tree, the water pooling and then rushing out the other side of its trunk
Shit!
If you don't do something the river's going to drag you into the net of branches and pin you there or you're going to get sucked under the trunk with the force of the water behind you. You strike out, kicking furiously for the further bank where the eddies spin you past the tree and then onto a sandbar. You clamber onto it, water running off your hair and into your eyes and down your neck as you shuffle your way across the sand and then splash through the shallows between the sandbar and the low, sloping bank of the river as you wring out your cloak. Fuck, your clothes cling to you and weigh about as much as that fucking sack of potatoes. Shit. You've lost Estel's knife in the fall.
"Oy! Fish!" comes the call echoing across the water and you lurch about to find Asshole #1 with the hunting horn, the two heretofore unnamed Assholes, and who else but motherfucking rat-bastard Harvey Tunnelson coming to a stop on the path high up on the tall bank across the river from you.
"'Oy' yourselves, motherfuckers!" you call back, flipping them off with both hands as you back up over the sand and into the rocky beach, making for the rolling meadows on the other side. Fuckers are on the wrong side of the river. Gonna take them some time to find somewhere safe to cross it and by then you are going to be long gone. Where? Who the fuck cares as long as it is away from the river and you can hole-up someplace and let them wear themselves out on the Wild looking for you.
You squint at them through the glare of the sun bouncing off the water.
Wait.
Where's Grinning Asshole #2?
Ow! Fuck!
Pain blooms at the back of your head and that's it folks. That is all she wrote. You are down for the count.