4

Through dark halls of stone, that once may have been home to some great lords, Ar-Tashk took Alaesia to a room. It looked like it once may have held massive stores of food, but now was ransacked and left with little more than empty grain sacks, crates and barrels, as far as Alaesia could tell. A hearth took up most of the wall on one side where smoldering coals rested. Her captor kicked a couple loose logs at the fringe of the hearth back into the embers, until eventually a great bonfire had revived and was lit ablaze inside. Her chain was lashed and hung high around a pillar; she was left to balance precariously on tiptoe to prevent her arms from being pulled from their sockets while her olog captor moved out of sight.

The parts of the room where the light of the fire did not touch, were chilled like ice. From where Alaesia was tethered, she would only hear the fire; she was not quite able to feel its warmth, but that was just fine by her. The cold stones pressed against the wounds on her chest, providing the slightest relief from the feverish throbbing which indicated the beginnings of infection as it set into her skin. There was a clatter as Ar-Tashk rifled around out of her line of sight.

In the dark, windowless depths of the fort, it was impossible to tell how much time was passing. It could have been a moment, maybe hours. The blinding pain pulsing was her only method of keeping time. She counted the pulses at first, only to hazily realize she had stopped counting at some point. Perhaps she had lost consciousness, but it was impossible to tell when the only hint of light she could see flickered at the edges of the pillar in her field of view.

Without warning a cascade of water was dumped over Alaesia's head, searing hot against her freezing skin. Ar-Tashk's thick hand pressed Alaesia's body against the pillar, bracing her like a butcher, ready to cut a haunch of meat. She had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out, holding back what little breath she could muster under the pressure of the olog holding her in place. The effort made her vision spot with blooms of darkness, threatening to overwhelm her eyes.

The olog's rough hands scraped over her wounds, as though he was stripping all the caked blood away. She felt her damaged rags being torn from her shoulders and hips, taking scabs and injured flesh with it. He continued pouring water over her and scraping at her skin until it felt raw under his blunt nails. Finally, he withdrew, back beyond her senses, leaving Alaesia stripped bare and still strung up in chains. Fresh blood trickled down her body and she could hear it dripping onto the floor. Only then did she slip into complete unconsciousness.

As he waited for a cauldron of water to heat up, Ar-Tashk examined his prize with little more than an animal-like possessiveness. The human woman had an unusual blaze of auburn hair that reminded him of a fox, though it was dull and unkempt; cleaned up, he considered briefly if it might make for a decent adornment to his armor. As for the rest of her appearance, she simply looked world-worn and twiggy, like most tarks he'd ever encountered. Ar-Tashk was perfectly familiar with human, elf-kind, or even weakling orcs as slaves, but he had never had a slave of his own. He found slaves pathetic, even revolting for their weakness. He hadn't even been planning on taking any when he went on his raid of Ku-Gohn's camp.

More than anything it had simply infuriated him when this stupid human had demanded he kill her; it took all the fun out of his game of cat and mouse. It wasn't as satisfying to let the mouse tell the cat what to do. He didn't get to toy with her nor make her plead for mercy.

Out of sheer frustration, he found the only thing he could do, to placate his own ego and need for control, was to deny her the release of death. Ar-Tashk bristled at the idea of a tiny pink-skinned tark, a sharlob no less, telling him what to do. Tarks were dirt; unworthy of ordering around an olog hai. Even his overlord, the bird-like uruk Vezhir, had to humble himself to ask Ar-Tashk to do anything. If Vezhir gave Ar-Tashk a direct order, it was as much an offense as an insult as far as Ar-Tashk was concerned. Short of just pointing the olog in certain directions and letting him loose, there was little the Overlord had in terms of command over the olog, which suited Ar-Tashk just fine.

When the water had started boiling, Ar-Tashk pulled it from the fire then unhooked his new slave's chain from the stone pillar. She slumped limply to the floor, cracks forming in the slowly scabbing wounds and causing yet more blood to ooze from the injuries across her body.

The jostling woke Alaesia as the olog dragged her toward a steaming cauldron. She kicked and screamed trying to escape, fearing she was going to be boiled alive. The human's sudden erratic outburst caught Ar-Tashk off guard and he had to heave the slave's chains back, sending her sprawling at his feet. He lifted her by the iron collar around her neck, holding her at eye level.

"You beg for life now, pinkskin? Lutom izish..." He uttered in cold, broken English.

Alaesia looked at the olog, her heart spasming in fear, then she glanced towards the still roiling cauldron. She didn't have a hope of escape. The walls surrounding her now were as much a tomb as a fortress. She resignedly gasped out, "I am ready to die..." Being boiled alive would be painful. At least it will be over soon… the thought crawled through her mind. Yet, at her words, she noticed the olog's matted mane of hair bristle and a snarl curled his lip. She could feel the vibration of his voice through the hand holding her aloft.

"Death is mine. You are mine, snaga-izub," He snapped, "You keep life, zi az urdan-gurut. Duth-latish. Clean your blood." The olog grunted and dropped her to the floor, and kicked a grain sack at her.

It was only then that Alaesia realized that she had been stripped entirely bare of her previous rags, all semblance of dignity destroyed. She clutched the dirty grain sack to her body to hide it from view, to which the olog only sneered; pinkskins were stupid enough to go about their lives wearing nothing but flimsy cloth that was as soft as their own skin, it made sense that they couldn't put up a fight against the well geared and naturally armored warriors of Mordor. To the olog, her frail form was almost hardly worth eating; at least orc snaga typically had some muscle on them to consume.

Alaesia tried to shield herself from the olog's sight, but to her relief he seemed preoccupied with the giant hearth that still roared with flames. She watched him out of the corner of her eye while it looked like he was using a set of bellows that was toylike in his massive grip. She couldn't see what he was doing, so she worked as quickly as she could to soak the grain sack in the boiled water in the cauldron and delicately scrub with its coarse fabric across her skin.

Every whimper of pain that unwillingly escaped from the slave's lungs seemed to make the olog bristle. The slightest hint reminding him of her presence seemed to agitate him. Any moment now, she expected him to lash out, making Alaesia instinctively shield her aching ribs, which stung with every move. She was nearly done cleaning herself when he turned suddenly back upon her, holding one end of an iron ballista bolt, the same kind that he had slaughtered Ku'Gohn with, while its metal head glowed from the heat of the fire.

Without warning, his free hand seized Alaesia's legs and he dragged her, screaming before himself, and pressed the iron into one of her open wounds. Alaesia shattered the fortress's silence as pure agony swallowed her back into dark unconsciousness.

****Translations****br /

Tark - Humanbr /

Snaga - Slavebr /

Sharlob - Human womanbr /

Lutom izish - Beg mebr /

Zi az urdan-gurut - Until I decide deathbr /

Duth-latish - Clean yourself