Chapter Seven: In Dreams
February 28 (Appendix B: "Eomer overtakes the Orcs just outside of Fangorn Forest.")
The warg shifted, her bones aching and tired, and as she turned, in her dreams she saw faces she did not know surrounded by the soft glow of light from within a hall, of food warm and plentiful, of laughter and song mingling together in the night. Of sunrises filled with golden and rose hues, of running through fields in the mist of dawn to catch the first glimpse of morning. There was another life to be lived, somehow, the dream told her. There were waving meadows of bees and rabbits to be hunted. A place to go to at night, a shelter. Yet she had never seen any of these things.
She awoke with a start and the dream drifted away almost completely in the bitter night air and on the small flakes of snow that fluttered down to rest on her coat, where they were forming a thin blanket. A sharp pain in her side, an ache, an absence. Her litter of pups was cuddled closely to the two pups of Men, yet the group was smaller by one of her own, now. There would be no more sleep for her this night. Nothing to do but figure out what would happen next.
The boy-pup was a problem, she decided. He had the knife in his boot, and although he was sleeping now, contented and calm, Men were easily swayed, and if they chanced upon some of his own kind, she was sure he would be bidden to do away with her and the remaining pups. Yet the orcs would treat them no better, would give them only the same life she herself had been granted. One that she was trying to escape. Though to what end, she could not say. To a life like the one she had dreamed about? The idea was absurd. She only knew that the life of hard iron and muzzles and kicks and whips was not the one she could endure any longer. Better to die younger trying to escape than meekly accept for a lifetime. Or so she told herself every few minutes.
Meanwhile, Fastred dreamt also. Yet only one thing of his dreamwas at all familiar to his was the image of torches, the same torches that had come to their home, and with that final image, he awoke to find the warg mother - Warg-as-a-proper-name, as she was now called by Brytta - staring at him with those copper eyes.
Disconcerted as he was, Fastred tried to avoid her gaze and to fall back asleep, but it would do no good, for she continued to look at him unceasingly.
"Can you hear me, boy?" Warg asked, padding softly towards Fastred and lowering her massive head to meet his at eye level. Fastred met her eyes with a coolness, but an empty one. Warg let out a gruff sigh, but let her wet nose touch his face. As she rested her head in her paws closer to her pile of pups. "Well," Warg said, though she knew full well the boy didn't know. "Well," she said again, but said no more on the matter. And so the two fell asleep, the boy's hand resting on the back of a warm pup, and Warg dozing with ears pricked.
As the sun rose over the hills to meet the travelers, Fastred woke with a start, his hand having fallen from the pup's back to the ground. The ground was trembling, and as he strained his eyes to see beyond the blinding white of the snow-covered plains, Warg twitched and woke also, her nose snuffling the air and a whine in her throat that the boy did not hear.
As one creature, Fastred and Warg whirled to the still-sleeping companions, Warg snuffling at her pups and Fastred shaking Brytta. Over the hill, the sun glinted off of spears and helmetes. And although Fastred could not hear it, a great echo of horns rang over the land.
"Come on, there're orcs, get a move on, come ON," Warg growled, and after Fastred helped his sister onto the mother's back, he began to run, and scooped up a toddling pup as well. The others could keep up, but this runt was not going to make it if it wasn't carried – how it escaped being the crow's victim before, Fastred did not know, and could only account it to bad luck. Well, he concluded, good luck on the runt's part, at any rate.
Warg ran and strained as she pounded across the land. She knew what the orcs had with them. Her former comrades must have found her scent, and if they caught up, her pups would no longer be hers, and the memory of chains and whips to keep her docile enough to saddle was all she needed to force herself to gallop faster. That was not a life she could bear any longer, and would not make her pups bear as well. Wargs had lost their sense of pack, and her former pack mates would just as soon betray her now as defend her. The honor of the pack was gone, beaten out of all of them. Except her. She would not give it up. And that fierce determination was what drove her away, this and many other times, again and again, and always their betrayal brought her back. But not this time – this time the crows had gone too far. She had always known them to be on only one side, and if you strayed from that side, you became the enemy, but they had gone after her children, and they had not run away. They had followed her orders, and were not to blame. Where was justice? If there was justice that had to be paid, she would pay it. Her pup should not have had to pay her price.
She ran faster. They would be no second chance, not after this. It was to be now that she escaped, or she never would. This much she knew. They were gaining ground between them, they were going to escape. This she repeated with every lunging stride away from them, her following betrayers. She snuffed the air as she ran and snarled. The scents of the others drifted to her in the wind that blew at their backs. Her own mate was betraying her. The realization forced her to spring forward in angry bounds, a red flame burning now inside of her. She would escape this time, or there would be blood spilled, and if it was hers, then so be it. Better to be dead than live enslaved with a crowd of betrayers-of-the-pack.
Where was honor? Where was loyalty?
Her heart raced and she sped onwards, with the child-pup clinging to her fur, silent. The Warg could not tell that the girl was silent only as cold tears fell onto the beast's fur. For behind them, Fastred was no longer in sight, and for the first time, Brytta knew that turning back would do nothing. Only as they lunged down another hill away from the following warg-riders did she whisper his name, and even the warg's sharp hearing did not notice. Down, they plunged, into a low bowl with trees skirting one edge. The two pups were at their heels, but the runt was still with Fastred, away behind them, and to what fate they would meet, Brytta did not know, or want to think about. She could only whisper his name. And so they entered the shadow of the trees, with Brytta leaving all hope behind as she heard the sounding of the horns across the distance once more, and the baying of wargs.
Once beyond the trees, they did not slow, instead wound around trees and jumped over fallen branches, twisting and turning until Brytta could not tell which direction they were going to or where they had come from. It was a maze of green limbs and shadows, strange animal calls and the sound of horns in the distance, though every time they turned another way, it seemed to come from a different place. Trees shifted in the wind, their boughs creaking in the wind, and soft plops of snow sounded as they fell to the earth.
Fastred ran, and ran still more, until he could no longer think of anything except putting one foot infront of the other. The pup that he carried was jumpy and didn't like being carried at such a bouncing gait, and so Fastred held it close to his chest, so that the small pup's heartbeat could be felt against his own, and to the steady beat of the two, Fastred ran. The sunlight was at his back, but still the sunlight was blinding as it shone against the pure snow, with only the tracks of Warg and her pups dimmer by their slight shadows of imprints. He followed them, up and down slopes, ever trying in vain to elude his pursuers. At first he had been able to see Warg ahead of him, but as she ran faster and faster, as if a great fire had been set behind her, he could catch a glimpse of her only so often, and soon every so often became only rarely, and then only rarely became not at all. A panic began to rise in his throat, but he swallowed, took even breaths as he ran, and grit he teeth as he struggled up another incline. But in his peripheral vision, he could see the gaining band of warg-riders approaching upon him, and as he tilted his head behind him, he lost his footing.
Fastred collapsed in the snow, the small warg pup wriggling still in his arms. The snow was too thick for him to run any faster, and the skittery pup was no help to him. He sputtered, coughed, and rolled to his side even as he saw the shadows appear and the hovering forms that followed.
A gruff fist grabbed a handful of his fair blonde hair, raising him up with a ragged cry of pain. Fastred struggled to escape the grasp, but it was to no avail. He found himself staring into the partially hidden slanted eyes of an orc. A long strip of metal grotesquely crossed partway over one eye to make it harder to meet, and it curved up into his helmet, where, Fastred sickly assumed, it joined with his skull at some point. The pup whined and Fastred felt its tongue slide along his arm before the orc roughly shook him and caused the lad to drop the warg pup.
No sooner had the warg touched the ground, then it was at the ankle of the orc holding Fastred, gnawing at the creature and quickly drawing blood with its small, yet sharp, canine teeth. The orc kicked at it, but though momentarily stunned, the runt scrambled back and bit again.
The orc's grip loosened for an instant as it again kicked the pup with a savage blow, and it tumbled backwards, rolling into a small heap of wet matted baby fur, whimpering. But in the moment when the orc's hand lessened its hold on Fastred's hair, the boy jerked back, crying out in pain as his hair was yanked, yet he fell to the ground as well, free from his captor's hold. Before the orc knew what had happened, the lad was running again in the direction Warg had taken Brytta, but just as quickly as he moved, so too did three other warg-riders, and the pup as well. The pup reached him first, but only by mere seconds, and as it started to lick his face, he found himself hauled back and upwards by strong arms once more, though this time thankfully not by his hair.
The pup snarled and Fastred leaned as much as he could to let his fingertips touch the small creature's muzzle. In an instant, the tiny beast calmed and sat quietly by the boy's feet until the boy jerked to one side as a fist knocked his ear, causing blood to trickle down from it down his neck in a dribbling line of crimson. The pup snarled, gave a short bark, and made once more to attack the orc who had hit Fastred, but Fastred shot out one foot infront of the pup, creating a barrier between it and the orc sneering at the pair. The pup snarled again, small copper beaded eyes snapping.
Once Fastred's collar was firmly held by the closest orc, a sharp blow fell to his head and Fastred, son of Dunhére, knew only empty darkness.
Brytta tossed and turned, her dreams taking her to places and feelings she had not known she could think about. Faces swirled around her, of elves shining with moonlight and trees glowing with gold and silver light, of fluttering green banners with the White Horse of Rohan waving in the breeze, and of a stone fortress and swords glinting against bright sunlight. She dreamt of caves glittering with stones and of stern, sad faces. And she dreamed also of her brother, riding upon the runt pup that had also been left, and of them she dreamed more than anything else. Behind her eyelids, she saw them riding towards their old barn, her mother coming out of their home to greet them, and Fastred riding by without even slowing. She awoke suddenly, found that she was sweating, and rolled back over to let one of the warg pups lick her palm. Gazing up through the canopy of dark leaves, she counted the stars, one by one, until at last she fell into other dreams, which she did not remember upon waking.
Away in the distance, long after the girl had fallen asleep, Warg heard with pricked ears the sound of many wargs baying, and she sighed, but did not sleep. Yes, for now, they had gained their freedom. But looking upon the lone man-pup who lay in a fitful sleep, and the absence of her smallest pup, she wondered at what cost.
