February 29 (Appendix B: "Meriadoc and Peregrin escape and meet Treebeard. The Rohirrim attack at sunrise and destroy the Orcs. Frodo descends from the Emyn Muil and meets Gollum. Faramir sees the funeral boat of Boromir.")

Lower West Emnet, in the small clump of trees below the Entwade.

Chapter Eight: Freedom

A/N: The speech patterns of the Orcs have been heavily influenced by Celebsul of The Burping Troll writing group. In addition, the Orcs used in this story are key characters with this group, and as such, while they may be read without prior knowledge of their characters, it may be beneficial to read the stories of The Burping Troll for further knowledge.

"Warg?" Brytta asked as she nibbled on the piece of rabbit that Warg had caught and she had cooked as best she could over a sputtering fire made on a great pile of sticks and dried leaves plucked from dead trees so that it would burn over the wet place on the ground that the girl had cleared of snow. She had not realized how hungry she had been until the Warg had mentioned food, and then she was ravenous long after the rabbit was finished. But at least not the faint feeling in her head was no longer there. Thinking clearly was becoming easier. "Where are we going?" She paused, then added, "Where can we go?"

"Where they won't follow us, you mean?" Warg replied. "Well, if they were going to follow us any further, they would've had us during the night. We'll go somewhere safe, I just don't know where yet. I'll figure it out soon enough."

Somewhat comforted, Brytta ventured, "The crows. They were behind us with Fyren. Were they following us, or were they following you, ahead of us?" The girl blew warm air into her cupped hands.

"Me. What'd you think they'd want with you three? They were following me ahead of the others, is all."

"Driven then by unlucky circumstance," the girl murmered, and Warg tossed her head in the wind.

"Mighty big words to use for someone your age," the creature commented, though she knew the girl had not been speaking directly to her. As such, Brytta gave no reply. Nevertheless, Warg gave a slight huff.

"Unlucky maybe, but not so unlucky as all that. Ya could've been found by a different warg, one not so kind-hearted as I am." She chuckled to herself. Kind-hearted was hardly the word she ever thought of to describe herself. "I'm the kindest one you'll meet, at any rate."

"You left him," Brytta said. Her words were colder than the snowy blanket that lay on the ground, and colder still were her eyes. The pups that had been wriggling and licking at her hands backed away into their mother, avoiding the girl's touch of a sudden. Brytta's tone rose, but still it was barely above a harsh whisper. "You left him there to do with one of your own. You aren't kindhearted. I saw that you are the most selfish creature I have ever met. You ran because you did not want to be theirs anymore. Not because you are kind. You left my brother to die, and you left your smallest one with him, and I am only here because I was your burden. You are the kindest warg I have met, but you still have the hardest heart I have ever seen." She stopped to take a breath, and then clamped her mouth shut. Staring at Warg, she silently challenged a reply.

Warg sat calm as stone as the girl spoke, and when Brytta was finished, Warg sniffed.

"The hardest heart you've ever seen. You claim to see the heart. Brytta, child-pup, you cannot see the heart any more than I can. You see my actions and I see yours. I left your brother and my child because going back would have resulted in only more deaths. I will defend those I love to the death, but if my defense will not change the course of time, if my defense will not prevent their death, then it is a waste of life. It would have killed you to go back." Her tone took on a low growl. "I carried you when I could have forsaken you and taken my little one instead. You slowed me, and still I bore you away."

Brytta lowered her eyes. "But you left him."

"His fate has not been changed by that fact, any more than my pup's would've been. You think I don't mourn? You know very little, Brytta. So little, if that is what you think." Warg sighed and lowered her head to nuzzle the blonde-headed girl who had buried her face in her fur. "So little," she murmured, though more to herself than the weeping girl. Long they sat in the woods, until Brytta rubbed her eyes and nose, empty of tears.

"So where to?" Warg asked as she nudged her pups , telling them it was time to begin traveling again.

"I don't know," Brytta said softly. "Fæder was north. Wargy?" she paused, bit her lip, then sighed. "Wargy, do you think he's safe?"

"Alive? Or safe?" Warg asked, looking over one shaggy shoulder as she surveyed the woods beyond the place where the group had spent the night.

Clarifying, Brytta answered, "Alive."

"Don't know. Can't say."

"So where will I go?" Brytta repeated with a stronger hint of urgency in her young voice.

The two pups raced around their mother as silence hung in the air.

"If," Warg said. "your father stayed in the north wherever he was, he might be safe, but the orcs and others are between us and him. If he went towards your hold, then chances are he's dead if the ones following me fell upon him. But either way, we can't go to him, because either there's no point, or we'll get killed in the process. No, don't bother asking it again, I have an answer for you already; I don't know. Know of anyplace yourself?"

Brytta shook her head.

"Well then," Warg said briskly. "Well."

Silence.

"Well," she repeated. "Gotta be someplace where I won't get killed on sight, you know." Brytta tilted her head in confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"Men see a warg, they kill it. They aren't gonna stick around while you explain that I'm a good one. Took you long enough to trust me, and your brother never quite did. Don't look at me that way, you know he didn't, can't say as I blame him. If I came riding up to a hold with you walking beside me and the pups, they'd have every lad and man sticking me full of arrows before you could say 'kindhearted'."

"Even if they saw that you could talk?" Brytta knit her brow.

"Oh, we all talk. But if you're the slave of orc scum that whip the words out of you, you learn to shut your trap real quick. Some of the others seem to have forgotten over the years, so only a few of us these days still remember the tongues of Men."

"What about your pups?"

"They'll talk when they're older. Something they'd never do if they were still under their mastery," Warg replied, her eyes glowing like embers.

"But what if I went before you to a hold and explained that you were really good and that they should treat you nicely?"

"Wouldn't work. They'd convince you that wargs are all bad at heart and that I'm lying and I'd kill you in your sleep the first chance I got."

"But you wouldn't do that!" the girl exclaimed.

"At least you hope not." The statement was accompanied by a toothy grin, and Brytta relaxed after a split-second of uncertainty. "The point is, going to a hold as group isn't going to work. I either find a place for you and let you walk a long distance hoping that they haven't posted scouts after hearing of the holds such as yours being burned. So where do we go? Seems like we just go the same way we're facing and see what we come across. Horses would be nice."

"Yes," agreed Brytta. "Then I could ride one of them and wouldn't burden you anymore."

"Actually, I was thinking horses because I'm hungry. Pups have got to eat, too. As do you."

Brytta paled.

"Sorry," Warg said with a shrug. "Besides, I'm free. No more master-rider. You don't ride me unless I say you can, and for today, I say you're walking." There was more than a hint of pride in Warg's voice, accompanied by grinning self-satisfaction. She looked down fondly at the two pups batting each other. Freedom. Yes, today would be a day without riders.

As the group began to journey once more, Brytta found herself staring in awe at the trees that hung low all around them. She had lived her whole life on rolling plains, with trees only ever seen in the far distance, except the few sparse clumps of them here and there. But never had she been so deep within a forest such as this one. Surely this was what Fyren had been talking about. Could these trees talk, if I asked them a question, if I tried to wake them, the girl wondered. A tree groaned from somewhere close by, and Brytta jumped out of the way as a heavy bucketful of snow fell to the ground, with hard icicles embedded in it. From ahead of her, Warg called back,

"Never mind that, Fangorn's the other direction, north. The closest thing to an Ent you'll see here is the River Entwash, or the Entwade, away to our left. The snow's just from the breeze."

Again the trees creaked and a branch was heard snapping, to land with a sudden deafening crash mere feet behind where Warg had been standing seconds before.

"Bad luck, that's all," Warg grumbled, but she nudged her pups on with her wet nose all the same, and motioned for Brytta to hurry over the fallen limb. A great rustling sounded high above them, and a small rain of brown leaves fluttered down to land on Warg's coat and in Brytta's hair. The girl smiled and caught one before it touched the earth, and held it towards Warg.

"Good luck, now, like Fæder always said," she began with a grin, but it was a feeble attempt, and her better spirits faded as quickly as they had come. She let the leaf crumple in her fist.

"You say…you have caught good luck, and you intend…to reverse it?"

Warg whirled and Brytta jumped, falling back into the snow in the process. She looked this way and that, but no one was there. Only the trees swaying to and fro, and Warg eyeing the underbrush with barred teeth, and the two pups blinking solemnly. Brytta scuttled backwards as the wind threatened to send another large amount of snow hurtling down from the trees, and as she backed, her hands felt scratchy tree roots protruding from the blanketed earth.

"Such a funny little thing…an odd assortment, the lot of you…" the voice trailed off in a voice that sounded like peeling bark.

"OH!" Brytta exclaimed, and she scrambled up, with Warg bounding to her side with a large leap. "It's you!" She stared at the slim beech tree that she backed into, her mouth agape and not even noticing. So this was what Fyren had meant, this was what the tales told about – for here, long white limbs with tendrils of bare winter vines draping down like elegant garments, was an Ent.

"And where…might this…haroom…sordid group be traveling in the cold? The winds blow from the north, ill news….ill indeed…" His words were drawn out as if taken in deep gulps of air, then exhaled slowly as he pondered them.

Testily and unperturbed, Warg asked,"And what's it to you?"

"You…walk through my home….then ask me…hroom…what business I have inquiring about your intentions? That is very odd, very odd indeed…"

He leaned down. A slender tree-ish face with muddy bird-like eyes met Warg's shaggy pricked-eared one.

"No more odd than your kind being awake this time of year," Warg quipped.

The tree made a loud gnarled sound like logs being split, and Brytta took a step backwards.

"It's gone mad since it escaped the first time – taste of freedom's gone and ruined it. Tha boy's tha only one who'll calm it, thee done saw it 'efore we took care of 'im."

"One more mouth, with no usefulness. Get rid of it."

"If we get rid of 'im, the pup's worthless. Might as well kill it, too. Save us the trouble. It'll slow us down otherwise."

"Tha Master demands speed. If we keep 'im, we'll go faster than with a pup gone mad. Faster t' keep 'im then."

"And when we arrive?"

"Kill it after that, 'less it's proved more useful as sommat else."

Fastred opened his eyes, then squeezed them shut again. His head throbbed and as his fingers rested on the ground, he could feel slight tremors born of many heavy feet. He tried to right himself from where he had awoken lying in the snow, but he quickly found that he wrists had been bound with frayed rope. His eyes caught the red patches of blood that were in the snow where his head had been, and grimaced to himself. He stared up at the sky, tired and aching. He had ceased to care where he was. He was hungry, and felt as though even if a sword was placed to his throat, he wouldn't be able to walk another step.

A shadow fell over him, blocking the sun. Sharp edges of a helmet were starkly outlined against the grey sky, and Fastred had to blink several times in order to focus on the details of the creature. Abruptly a furry wriggling mass was dropped down onto the ground next to the boy. A sharply-clawed hand grabbed hold of his ear, but even if Fastred would have been able to hear the words, he would not have understood the harsh, guttural language that the orc used before it stalked away in the opposite direction, leaving the wiggling creature behind.

The warg pup licked Fastred's face, and the boy blinked again, this time out of confusion. His wrists were still tied, but he wasn't dead. 'Why?' he wondered, but his head still throbbed, and there was a stickiness that was trickling into one ear, dripping red onto the snow. The warg had a thick chain around its neck, and was tethered to something, but it didn't try to wander away, and instead settling comfortably next to Fastred and napped. Fastred felt his eyelids drooping, and was asleep again within minutes.

When he awoke next, the warg pup was snuffling at his face, a small chunk of something held firmly in its jaws, which it poked towards Fastred with a sense of urgency. Fastred shifted his weight but did not open his eyes fully. He felt faint, and would have closed his eyes completely again, had he not suddenly recognized the sharp smell of meat. The pup again shoved its nose into the boy's face, forcing him to focus on it, and for the first time in many hours, he felt suddenly revived, and more ravenous than he had even thought was possible. For in the pup's mouth hung a small portion of meat. The boy couldn't tell if it had been cooked or not, but he didn't care. His head still throbbed, and as he licked his cold lips for any remaining taste of the morsel, a shadow again fell over him, the same one as before.

The orc lifted a foot as if to kick the pup, but the diminutive warg bared its small teeth with anger dancing in its young eyes. With deft fingers the orc grabbed the roped that bound Fastred's wrists together, and lifted the boy to his feet. Fastred wobbled on his legs, still weak from hunger and fatigue, which earned him a rough shake before he felt cold steel resting against his throat. The warg pup growled, then sank its teeth into the leg of the orc, which caused it to simultaneously let out a howl and drop the knife.

Fastred bent down to catch the warg pup by the nape of its neck, picking it up to cradle against his chest as best as he could manage with the state of his hands. The orc cursed, grabbed at the pair and again the boy felt the all-too-familiar feeling of panic rise in his throat. The orc's breath was hot as it spoke, and just as he thought the cold steel would find its home in his body, Fastred found himself shoved forward with the pup still held close to him, away towards the crowd of orcs he had not noticed before. The warg licked Fastred's jaw, then looked over the boy's shoulder to the orc that followed close behind, its eyes dancing again.

Though Fastred could not hear the words, the orc spoke to his fellow who walked along behind the prisoners.

"Tha sees there's nowt but one way t' keep tha pup. It can't be controlled w'thout tha lad. He can be made to go faster."

"Gubbitch, thy's daft.."

"We need the pup. If tha boy can keep it from killin' us or causing delays, then that's what we use."

"Thy's also stupid."

"I TOLD tha, we'll make 'im go faster that we would w'th a warg bent on killin' us."