Rohan, West Emnet
February 26 (Appendix B: "Breaking of the Fellowship. Death of Boromir; his horn is heard in Minas Tirith. Meriadoc and Peregrin captured. Frodo and Samwise enter the eastern Emyn Muil. Aragorn sets out in pursuit of the Orcs at evening. Eomer hears of the decent of the Orc-band from Emyn Muil.")
Chapter Three: Leave-taking
Fastred awoke with a start, slamming his forehead into the wood wall it had been resting against in the process. The cold fingers that firmly gripped his shoulder were hard and bony. How long had he been sleeping, where was he, what was going on? And now his head was throbbing, it was hard to think, it hurt to think.
Then the smell of old smoke met his senses and in an instant he became dully aware of everything. But it still did not explain the unfamiliar fingers that tightened even as he recovered from his jolted awakening. A pang of terror caused him to yank his body around to get a better look of the intruder.
The young man looked no more than twenty. His eyes were a smoldering blue, not light, not dark, as ordinary as Fastred could think of, but seething with a cold flame that the youth quickly found himself inwardly identifying with. Was it a calm fury that shone there, glinting like the eyes of a cat? Fastred would have pondered on them longer, but the man's lips moved, and he struggled to understand what was being said.
It was no use, the man talked too fast, his head tilting while he spoke in the direction of the house, so that Fastred could not watch the words as they met the air. The dark blonde hair that flipped and curled at his neck as he turned his head was tangled and matted from obvious neglect, and soot had smudged itself in with the dirt that was evident.
Where she had fallen asleep in the hay, Brytta yawned and started to nestle down further before her sapphire eyes snapped open in shock. The grey cat that had snuggled underneath the crook of one of her arms yowled as she accidentally knocked it with her elbow in her distress.
As she gasped at the sight of the newcomer, Brytta gulped, "Who're you?"
Turning toward the little girl's voice, the man gave her what looked to be his best attempt at a smile. "Fyren, madam, and you'd best tell me who you are that you haven't been burned alive like the rest of 'em. Some wee magic princess, eh? And you," Fyren turned to Fastred. "You'd be the princeling of the hold? Hid up 'ere, told the servants to release the horses as a diversion, and when the orcs come upon the servants, the beasts don't think a young boy could be the master of such an idea, so they think they've killed 'em all, eh?"
Brytta stared at him from the hay and caught Fastred's eye. The two shared bemused expressions, Fastred's nearly equal to Brytta.
"I'm not a princess. He's not a prince. You talk funny." Brytta sniffled, then sneezed, wiped her coat sleeve under her nose. I want my modor." She didn't want to cry and look like an infant, but she felt that she would at any moment.
As if he hadn't noticed her distress, or, Fastred wondered, he was simply ignoring it, Fyren held down a brisk hand to pull the girl up from her makeshift bed. Once she was standing, he looked down and scratched the fuzz that was growing on his chin. Fastred decided the man was younger than twenty now that he had turned again towards the wall where the light of day shone through the cracks towards their faces. Maybe it was the bony fingers that made him seem older.
After a moment of silence as he sized up both children, Fyren looked down a thin nose to Brytta. With a tilt of his head in Fastred's direction, he asked, "Does he talk, or is he just shy?"
"Not shy. Just can't hear. Modor said it was because he was given good eyes, so to compensate he didn't have as good hearing. Where's modor?" Brytta replied.
"If your mother's here, she hasn't out yet to tell us, so how about comin' with me, hey?" Fyren countered.
Brytta frowned. "She'll come out once we tell her it's safe. We just have to find her." To her, the words offered a small ray of sunshine, the reminder that of course mother was fine. She had to be. She was modor. It was as simple as that.
Fyren knelt down to the girl's eye level, wary of the stare that the boy kept trained on him. "Look, if you want to be safe, you come with me. If you want to stay here and wait for no one, that's fine, but when I'm off riding one way and you get hungry, I don't want to see your sorry faces runnin' after me when I've got my heart set on a bigger serving of food than I'd have had if you came along in the first place. You come now, or not at all, but I'm tellin' you outright it's cold, and that hay is gonna look nicer and nicer to eat the longer you stay here."
A hand shot between Fyren and Brytta, startling both enough so that each jerked their heads back to avoid it. It belonged to Fastred, and with his eyes on Brytta, asked with a point of his finger, 'who is he?'.
Brytta twisted her face in confusion. Who was he, anyway?
"Fyren, my brother wants to know what you're doing in our barn on our land."
Her voice took on an authoritative tone it had not carried when she spoke for herself. Her eyes too, now that she spoke for her older brother, took on his age, lost some of their naïve assumptions. Looking at her, Fyren knew the boy did not hold the same hopes as the girl.
"Two holds down is where I come from, the herder was my father, but he and the others, I don't think they made it through the raid. I went to let Wintra – that's me horse below if you can see 'im – free , cause he's my friend and all and I wanted to give 'im a chance at least. Done got meself away in the process, saved my own hide at least, hey? So I come up to Master Leofwine's hold and see the place nearly done burning and the horses nearly all gone, and the people, what's left of 'em, well the crows'll finish that up."
He stopped, aware of the girl's pale face. He hadn't meant to make her ill, and yet she appeared ready to vomit.
"Look, I'm safe, and going someplace safer, so if you'd rather not freeze or starve to death, I say come on with me. Not everyone's gonna take a girl and a deaf boy along with 'em, so if I were you, I'd take what I could get. Was what I was doin' when I came in here, looking for some hay to sleep in, and there you were, already there. And I 'talk funny' 'cause in the herders, you aren't around proper folk often enough t' care. You say what needs sayin' in whatever way it needs to be said. This was our way, if y' please, your highness."
Brytta gave an involuntary shiver.
"See now, you're cold already. Your brother too, I 'spect." Fyren and Fastred exchanged glances. Yes, indeed all three individuals were cold, with both children turning light shades of violet.
Yet when Fyren began to climb down the ladder, expecting the two to follow, they did not. Instead, Fastred stared at him through cold eyes, while Brytta only shook her head in what Fyren could not pinpoint as either sadness, a dull realization, or denial.
"Where's modor?" her voice asked. Fyren stopped climbing down the ladder. What could he do? Show her the burned-out home? The places where grass once grew? The deep marks that the orcs had left when their feet dug into the ground, and where their wargs had walked? If their mother had survived, she was not here – he had already been around the rest of the hold in hopes of finding anything salvageable, and had come across nothing. If their mother was dead – what he expected, from what he had found at Hasuwyn's hold – then that was that. All of these things Fyren logically knew he could tell the girl. But as he looked at her, there seemed to be no kind way to explain. She sniffled again.
Abruptly, Fastred intervened again, placing his hand on his sister's shoulder and meeting Fyren's eyes. Although the lad did not say anything - could not, Fyren reminded himself – the truth was passed between them in a simple nod of a head and the stiffening of a chin.
"Ow!" Brytta complained as she looked up and scowled at her brother, pushing his hand away from where it had gripped and his fingernails had unwittingly dug into her skin. "Why do you have to do that?" she muttered, although she knew perfectly well he could not hear the words, and because she was sitting and he was standing, he could not see her mouth form the words.
How mother had worked to let him be able to know what they were saying when they spoke. She would hold up his hat and say the word over and over, getting Fastred to memorize the way her mouth moved when she said the word that meant he should put on his hat. And still he mixed up words that looked the same – and there were so many that were nearly identical! There were so many things to memorize, and she couldn't imagine what it was like to memorize them without knowing what they sounded like. And yet the boys of the hold were always calling him "toidi" whenever mother hadn't been watching. How she had hated them when they said so. How she had wanted to pummel them and knock them to the ground, how she wanted to hurt them when they said such things. She hated them. She hated the orcs too. And the wargs and the fire and the cold. Where was mother?
There had only been one time she could ever remember when she had been glad mother was not around. Only once…
"He's not!" she had screeched. She planted her fists at her sides and glared as meanly as she could at Bregdon, hoping her eyes were snapping as much fire as she imagined they were. He grinned, showing the chip on one of his front teeth that had gotten there during the last fight he had gotten into with one of the other boys. Everyone knew about it and the trouble he had gotten into because of it. But the trouble didn't seem to mind the boy a bit – he loved the attention it had earned him, and now he felt like strutting a little.
"Is too, can't even say his own name, an' he's older than me." His voice held the obvious tantalizing tone that to Brytta was just begging to be punched for.
"He can't, because he can't hear, so how could he say words if he didn't know what they sound like? Are you that stupid not to understand that?" she countered.
"Oh, using such fancy language there little miss Brytta, aren't you?"
She sniffed. "I use the words that suit me."
"For a six-year-old, I'd watch what I said if I were you."
"Almost seven," she countered. He laughed.
"I'm nine, that's a big difference. You probably wouldn't know your name if people didn't tell it to you all the time. Just like Fastred, can't think right."
"He can too! He's – he's smarter than you'll ever be, he can draw pictures that look better than real!"
Bregdon threw back his head to let a laugh bellow out. "Pictures! He can draw pictures! Better than real, what's that 'sposed to mean, better 'an real?"
"It's better than what you see with your eyes, it's like you imagine things could be."
"Well, why doesn't he just imagine hearing things then, imagine talking about 'em?"
Before the last word was fully formed, Bregdon found himself the target for the blonde whirlwind that raced at him, tumbled knotted-fists-first into his middle. He knew he had made her angry – it was what he had been trying to do, after all – he hadn't counted on the attack. With a grunt, she sent him backwards a step, almost knocking the wind out of him. For someone that little, she was a catty thing as she began clawing at him as he fought back to knock her away from him and onto the ground. It didn't take long for him to shove her away, because as surprised at the outburst as he had been, she was still considerably shorter and more wiry than he. She stumbled backwards as he retaliated, but quickly regained her initial blaze of anger and again raged towards the older boy. What she held over him in agility he made up for in strength, however. Although she gave one more punch towards him – those knuckles were small but hard, he thought – she soon found herself pushed heavily to the dirt.
"Face it, you can't beat me up, you're too little," Bregdon said, his eyes showing off the pride he felt. She sneered up at him from where she still sat, crossing her arms across her dusty chest.
"I'm a little girl who's younger than you, and look, you're bruising." She grinned with smug satisfaction.
"That green horse – Syrcan – bit me, that's what everyone'll think," he countered, lowering his chin. "I'll make sure that's what they think."
"They might think it, but I'll know. My brother'll know." She unfolded her arms and wiped her hands against each other with a dainty precision.
"And you'll be the only one who'll be able to tell anyone about it. And you won't." His voice held the dripping warning that he wanted to make her fear. Her eyes sparked at his words – how he did love to see them jump and blaze like that when she was mad, it was so much fun to rile her – but then she let an impassive curtain fall over them.
"Yes, I suppose I will be the only one." Her voice was high as if she were composing a nursery tune. "But then, no one would believe you got bruised by me, would they, so to everyone it would be just a silly tale. I don't see how telling it could hurt you." Inwardly she was amused by herself, but outwardly she let only a small gleam of her thoughts glimmer through her eyes. Bregdon's shoulders tightened, but on his face he let only a calm seething look appear.
"You won't tell them."
"Well, I'm sure you hope I won't," Brytta smiled enigmatically.
She stood and walked away, not once looking over her shoulder. She had won. She knew she had. And how she had secretly enjoyed watching his forearm turn a dull purple as he had argued with her after she had fought. It had been very satisfying.
Brytta had always yearned to tell her mother the story of the day she and Bregdon had fought over Fastred's honor, as Brytta had seen it. And yet she never had. Perhaps it was because she enjoyed the delicious secret nature of it that she didn't want to let anyone else taste. Secrets were always better when they were untold. So much more delicious when one thought about them all alone, like an orange at Yule, a treat to be peeled away and savored over and over again, all alone. Or maybe it was because Brytta knew her mother would not aprove of the way she had handled the situation. Mother would have said that Brytta should have talked about their differences and come to an agreement about not hurting Fastred's honor in the holds. Mother would have not liked to have heard that her daughter had attacked an older boy and had bruised his arm and made it all purple. She wouldn't have liked it at all. But although it was a valid reason for not telling, Brytta still knew in her heart that the reason she didn't tell was because she liked to think to herself of that day. If she told anyone, it would be exciting news for a day or two, and then it would wear away and it would be just another tale on the shelf. But if she kept it secret, she could relive it whenever she wanted to in the comfort of her own mind, enjoying the bits more because they were only hers and Bregdons. And she knew he had no intention of telling a soul as long as he lived.
And now, after such a long time of savoring the memory of that glorious fight, Brytta wished she could curl up on her mother's lap and tell her every detail. Of Bregdon's aghast look when she first rushed at him, of the feel of satisfactory dirt that had gotten on her dress and hands from fighting, of the anger that had burned so deep inside of her in a way she had not felt before. Was it pride? She wanted to ask her mother.
An ache she had not fully realized now began to throb in her chest. She wanted her mother. She wanted to tell her of the fight. It was as if an iron weight had been dropped in her stomach and it was hurting her so much that if she didn't breathe properly, she felt she would die. She wanted her mother.
A hand cupped her chin in her reverie, and she looked up, her lower lip trembling.
"Brytta – that's your name, right then? – no tears now, we've got to be moving and we don't want them turning into wee icicles while we're walkin' now, eh? Come on, got to hurry less you want to freeze to death out here." Fyren glanced down the wooden ladder than led down into the lower part of the barn.
Fastred grabbed a hold of his little sister's hand, and before she could protest or let a tear fall to dribble down her cheek, they were climbing downwards to where Fyren's horse waited to carry them away to…
Brytta was startled to realize she had no idea where they were going.
The thought both frightened and excited her, and at once the ache in her stomach increased as though it sensed a new burden. Would they be leaving home – or rather, what was left of it?
The three figures – one tall, lanky, with a long, almost morbidly jaunty stride, another shorter with a smooth step that made him seem as though he were gliding instead of walking, and the smallest, with her steps that told of a panic that must be going on in her mind - walked outside into the glaring daylight. Brytta and Fastred, each having been hidden inside the dark barn for hours, blinked not because of the startling sunlight, but in stunned amazement at the smoking heap that had once been their home.
With sick, growing clarity, Fastred stared. If anyone had been in the house, if they had not been able to escape, then there was no hope left.
The thought made him ill, and he was vaguely aware of his knees buckling underneath him, of his head arching towards the ground, of a rising mass in his throat as he vomited. His fingers clawed at the dry ground where once there had been winter grass, working at nothing but ash and dirt.
At any other time, he would have been ashamed to show his emotions so freely – but no such shame came to him now. Beside him, Brytta shivered and shuddered, her own breathing becoming ragged as she struggled to put together the pieces of what lay before her eyes. The smoldering remains of their house, the empty barn, her brother on his knees on the ground, and no mother there to lay a warm hand on his forehead, no one to make him feel better. No mother.
The final thought jammed itself into her heard like a spear thrust straight through. A short, choked gasp escaped her, but now the tears that had threatened for so long would not come. She worked her fists and dug her fingernails into her palms so hard that small pricks of blood appeared, yet the tears she longed to shed to ease the pulsing pain refused to fall.
Fyren stood behind both children, watching the different reactions of both. So they had not seen the full outcome of the orcs, then. This much was obvious to him. The quiet boy looked pale, but after he had vomited, the small convulsions that had first attacked his body were diminishing. He still knelt on the sooty ground, but his ashen face revealed a calm, iron sorrow, as if the initial mourning had been purged already.
Brytta's body shook, but her eyes darted as some wild bird's, and she looked nearly mad. Although Fyren had expected her to, she did not shed any tears, and this surprised him. She was young, and while he could understand Fastred's relative composure, he could not understand the girl's unless it was shock. Her tears would come far too soon enough, Fyren surmised grimly.
"Can't we go to Mistress Feallan's hold northwards?" Brytta asked with her voice as strong as she could make it while looking up at Fyren where he towered over her.
"No little mistress, iffin we go that way, we'll likely to run into the orcs, and then where'll we be then? We'd be in a right fix, that's where – no we've got to go where they've already been, down over the hill and further. I thought comin' this way would be better, but I was wrong, so back we're going to go, and you two with me."
Brytta took a deep breath and felt the hard fingers of her brother on her shoulder. They tightened, and she looked up to meet his cold stare. She was not to cry – not now, she knew from his look. It was as if someone had taken a flickering blue torch to his eyes and had set them ablaze. She had never seen them look that way, and it was not a look she would soon forget.
"What about fæder?" she asked, still not willing to leave unless it was absolutely necessary.
"Where was he during all of this?" Fyren replied, jerking his head towards the smoking heap of their home.
"Out buying a new horse, north. He'd be back soon, just had to travel a day or a bit more, depending."
"Well, it's now depending on that band o' orcs, so we're still going the other way – no use taking chances, and you don't want to find him like you did Master Leofwine, now do ye?"
His quick tone so empty of any emotion other than haste both frightened and enraged Brytta. Who was he to tell her not to wait for her father, to go with him, and here she felt her heart was being twisted in two and it was hurting and he wanted to hurry away! Again she felt her insides begin to pulse, and to stop it, the only thing she was able to muster out was a tumble of words.
"How do you know I found Master Leofwine and I want to wait for fæder and I want modor and I'm cold and hungry and my knee hurts and why don't you just go away." Brytta would have said more except again Fastred clenched her shoulder.
Tersely, Fyren replied, "Your footprints were all around the body and I can't think of anyone else within miles of here with feet that small. You can wait here if you want to be killed, or die of cold or starve to death. Are you coming?" He again nodded his head, this time in the direction of where his horse had been picketed and looked to Fastred. The boy answered with a short nod and gave his sister a push in Fyren's direction.
'Good, at least someone has some sense here," Fyren thought, glad to be moving on. He did not want to linger here, and he had a feeling that if they did, the girl would soon start bawling and that was something he had no intention of putting up with. There were some things that were simply too much to deal with, and a crying little girl wanting something she couldn't have was one of them. Hopefully her brother would keep her quiet, so long as he knew what quiet was.
The sky was a smudged grey color and far off the specks of black that were crows could still be seen overhead. Either there were more of them to the north or they were the same ones that had flown over before, and were nearer than Fyren would have liked them to be.
"What about Hwesta?" Brytta pleaded with chattering teeth as Fastred gave her another shove towards Fyren's horse.
"And who's Hwesta? I don't see any other 'round 'ere so I'm thinking she's not comin' with us, eh?" Everything he said sounded like a question, Brytta noticed.
"She's our horse. There's a fence way out, she couldn't have got out." She pointed as helpfully as she could in the direction she knew they were to be going in. "If we got her, we could ride her and not bother your horse."
Fyren made a short clucking sound in his throat. "I hardly think your horse is out there to be found if she ran off before that party arrived. She's more likely as not jumped the fence never t' be seen ag'in. That or speared through or taken for their own use." He gave a half-shrug to the young girl who sent him a shocked stare.
Brytta protested with her fists clenched at her sides, "Jumped the fence? She's never, she woudn't, she never has before!"
Fyren sent her the same blank look she had seen too many times already since she had met him. "And she hasn't seen orcs before either, has she?"
Brytta sent her eyes to the ground and stubbed one toe into the dirt. "No, she hadn't," she conceded.
"There then ye have it. Chances are she's out and found a fate of her own and you'd best hurry to get t' yours while ye've still a chance w' the rest o' us, eh?" He turned his back to her and lowered his head to tighten the girth of the horse.
"Hey, ho Wintra," Fyren spoke into the gelding's backwards ear. "We'll be getting ourselves out o' this place soon 'nuff, eh? Don't like the smell any more than ye do, I know, I know. Awful, tis, right nasty. And ye don't like the crows way off much either, do ye? No? Well, we'll just get our visitors up on ye and be on th' way right quickly, down away there where we were."
Brytta liked the sound of Fyren's voice much better when he murmured to the horse as he tightened straps here and there. It was a soft speech that mixed the words and ran them together like a sort of weaving. It rose and fell in odd places and she thought to herself that she rather wished they had been born into the more remote herding families, so they could talk the way he did, so smooth and ringing. It sounded lyrical, like a spoken song, like one her mother might have sung to put her to sleep at night. She had sung of elven creature who glowed like winter moonlight and who wore circlets of stars.
Again the ache swelled inside her stomach. 'No,' she told herself. Modor was not dead. She had escaped and they would find each other soon. They would find each other and be safe and happy and they would build a new home and they would find Hwesta, and fæder would return home safe with a new horse for Fastred to learn on , and Fastred would become a great warrior, and would draw many pictures for her of places he saw.
But Brytta would be happy with just the first part – the part she knew must be true. Modor was fine. She had escaped. Brytta smiled. There would not be tears because Modor was not dead. Yes, Modor was safe, and that meant it was best to leave with Fyren to be safe too.
Fastred kept his eyes trained on the black specks that appeared to be drawing closer and closer overhead.
Crows. And they looked as though they were getting closer. This was affirmed for Fastred when Fyren snapped his head around to stare with a sudden panicked look in his glinting eyes.
