Iorveth had not been able to ignore the nagging guilt that had appeared the moment he had spoken those words. He could not remember to what purpose he had said them, whether because he had wanted to show her how much exactly he knew, or perhaps just to spite her. All he could think of was that horror-struck look on her face as she had relived what might have been the worst day of her life.
Had Iorveth himself not claimed that theirs was a dying cause? That they had to change their course if they were to succeed at anything? That inh'eids had just as much reason to hate humans as they did? The words he had told her had been the very proof of this; after all, the command of a human had taken the most important person in her life away from her. But how could he possibly change the way his soldiers thought if he didn't make an example of himself?
These thoughts filled his head as he made his way out of the camp, carrying bowls in the direction of the tree against which she had been tied. When he saw the state of her, it became obvious that he was not the first to visit her. Ivor, he presumed, had come here too, for the bandages covering her leg looked brand new. He would let it slide though; it would not help the situation if she remained incapable of hunting for even longer. Though the cooking had improved greatly over the last few days, four elves and an inh'eid crowding the kitchen would never go well for much longer.
When she had attacked him, he had felt anger burning inside of him, but when he had wanted to hit her back he had hesitated for a split second. Not long after that she had stopped struggling, and he had been able to see her body trembling, though whether in grief or rage, Iorveth did not know. Had he gone soft already? She was not the first to have lost a parent, was not the only one with a tragic history. Iorveth himself boasted a particularly horrifying past, what with all the battles in which he had taken part and the scars he had received from them. What could possess him to cut her some slack?
Gwen sat with her back against the trunk and her arms stuck by her side, staring at nothing in particular. Her head snapped up when she heard him approach, and the scowl on her face was immediate when she spotted him. Iorveth sighed, his nagging feeling of guilty already replaced by annoyance. All was well once more.
"What, come to ask me some more questions?" she spat when she took note of what he had brought with him. "Do you perhaps wish to hear the details of her death, what her last words were? Well, they we-"
Iorveth interrupted her by forcing a spoonful of stew into her mouth, causing her to choke and cough.
"Do you want to kill me as well now?!" she snapped, but quickly closed her mouth and turned her head to the side when he threatened her with another spoonful.
"Covering your ears won't do anything for hiding your mixed nature if you continue to wear your heart on your sleeve like that," the elf said as he sat down in front of her, staring at her with his one eye while she struggled to pull up a blank mask. He couldn't help how the corner of his mouth twitched upwards; the half-elf was so easy to manipulate.
The sight of her eyes when she looked up at him all of a sudden nailed him to the spot. He had thought them to be a simple brown, the colour of mud when it began to rain, for he had never seen them in broad daylight like this, without anger clouding them. Now he realised that they in fact were a dark shade of amber, flecks of gold scattered around her iris. In contrast to the eyes of elves, emotions raged about in them like wildfire, almost enticing the elf to lean closer and have a better look.
He had heard and read of the human saying that the eyes were the windows to the soul, but had always scoffed at it, believing it to be the result of some perverted romantic side that the humans hid away whenever they did not feel like killing elves. It seemed, however, that he had been wrong.
By the time he snapped out of his sudden reverie, Gwen had freed her arms and had begun feeding herself. Iorveth did not pretend to look surprised, and the inh'eid did not look surprised at his lack of it. Sometimes the two of them could come to silent agreements after all.
"Are you going to continue staring at my exceptional beauty or is there a purpose to your visit? Have you forgiven me for my outburst yet? Am I free to do as I please again?" She stopped speaking in favour of eating another spoonful of stew, after which she pressed the tip of the spoon against her lip, a thoughtful expression on her face. "The gods know the kitchen needs me."
Iorveth did not reply at once. He wanted to apologise, but why or for what he did not know. But if Gwen planned on acting as if nothing had happened, then Iorveth would play along.
"I wanted to make sure you hadn't gotten eaten by a nekker," he said instead.
With a snort, the inh'eid shook her head. "If nekkers came this close to your camp, you should replace your archers. Or perhaps they let one through on purpose, and then you'd have proof of elven corruptness right in front of you."
"Now listen here you little shit," Iorveth snapped all of a sudden, his invisible brows dipping down into a frown, "you cannot hope to become an integral part of this unit if you continue to act like an enraged beast all the time."
"Who said I wanted to become a part of this - this circus," Gwen yelled at him as she threw the empty bowl in his direction, where it landed just before his feet. "You act as though you actually gave me a choice. Oh, saviour that you are, helping out a poor wretched inh'eid, right?"
"I did give you a choice. Join me, or-"
"Or be thrown out into the wild with a torn-up back, a broken leg and no weapons or other resources whatsoever. Do you honestly believe I chose you because I wanted to?" Gwen asked him while she looked at him, the question earnest in her gaze. Great, now she had started mocking him.
Iorveth flung the second bowl out into the bushes before he pushed himself off the ground. "Remind me to hang the next half-elf I come across."
"With pleasure!" Gwen screamed as he left.
For a moment she did not know whether she should look at his retreating back, or to wherever he had thrown the bowl, though she couldn't save its contents anyway. Why did she constantly have to bite the hand that fed her? In her anger, at herself and Iorveth and everything, she bit on her hand, so hard that tears filled her eyes.
But at least her stomach had settled again, now that it had a little food filling it. She stared at where Iorveth had disappeared, back to the camp, and wondered what she should do now. He hadn't fixed her ropes, but Gwen wasn't quite sure that she should go after him just yet. And anyway, she didn't feel like following him in the first place; she couldn't stop seething.
Muttering curses under her breath, she wriggled herself free from her pathetic binds and stood up with the help of the tree before she tested the pain in her leg. At least the few days of sitting on the ground and doing nothing had had some use, though she couldn't believe that her wound had healed this fast. Didn't fractures take at least a couple of weeks to get better? Most likely the trap hadn't been as potent as everyone had thought.
Gwen limped over to the next tree, away from the camp, before she leaned down and pulled a knife she had nabbed from the kitchen out of her boot, just in case any nekkers had managed to elude the guards after all.
With her weapon in hand, she pushed herself from tree to tree, watching and waiting and then watching some more before she took another step. She had done this too often to let the anger inside of her make her rash. Plus, as long as it took her anywhere but here, she would take all the time she needed to get it done properly. Perhaps... perhaps going to Flotsam had been the better idea after all. Though at least now she would be doing it on her own terms, and not in the company of guards and murderers.
Unfortunately for Gwen, however, she did not know exactly in which direction Flotsam lay. As a matter of fact, she did not even know where she was in the first place. She could hear water nearby and remembered that a stream flowed from the heart of the forest surrounding Flotsam to the river above the town, which meant it had to pass it as well. Her best bet would be following the stream, and that was exactly what she did when she found it after making her way down the hill on which the elves had situated their camp.
Before anything else, she pulled off her shoes and stepped into the water, a shiver running through her body at the coolness, but she revelled in the feeling instead of shunning it. She couldn't remember the last time she had cleaned herself, and so she kneeled so that she could hold her arms under water as well. Her clothes became wet because she dared not undress out here in the open where anything could jump out at her from behind a bush, but that only meant they got a cleaning too.
For a few moments afterwards, she simply sat there, taking in her surroundings. In the camp she had always been surrounded by elves, she could never look anywhere without spotting at least one. Now all she could see was green, green and more green, and she loved it. If there was anything her mother had passed on to her, it was her love of nature, something which had been rather difficult to endure when they had still lived in Vengerberg.
The half-elf took in a deep breath and couldn't help the smile that appeared on her face when she smelled all kinds of plants. Nothing but the sound of birds chirping, the wind blowing in the leaves and the water flowing around her filled the air, and for the first time in years she could admit that she felt truly at peace.
Her ire had waned in the meantime, so Gwen got up and decided to continue on her way before she turned back and apologised to Iorveth after all. She would rather be eaten by an endrega than make herself say sorry to that stupid elf.
She did not know for how long she followed the stream, walking around trees and boulders that blocked the path and pushing through bushes that grew right on top of the water, but after a while, when nothing appeared to change, she began to doubt her own memory. Had she even remembered it right? What if she had just made herself completely and utterly lost? She knew she could survive in the wilderness, but that had been with a complete array of weapons on her back, not just a knife.
The trees, which had been pleasant company in the beginning, began to close in on her and she froze to the spot, believing that she heard something somewhere behind her. She dared not to turn around and look, however, believing that perhaps whatever it was would leave her be if she did not move, but then she scolded herself for that wishful thinking and glanced over her shoulder.
Nothing.
"See? You're only making yourself antsy," Gwen mumbled before she looked back ahead of her. If she squinted, she thought she could make out something red flicking in the distance: fire. And where fire was, life followed close by.
Feeling triumphant, the half-elf allowed herself a grin as she continued to follow the stream, though this time she stayed clear of the water itself. She did not want the sound of her feet splashing through it attracting any attention, not when she thought she had almost reached her destination.
It seemed, however, that she had managed to forget that most monsters functioned not only with their ears, but also with their noses.
The familiar sound of the ground rumbling reached Gwen's ears, and she whirled around just in time to see that she had passed a nekker nest hidden behind some bushes. Dust that had flown up into the air from their digging surrounded the area, and the half-elf stared in horror as three monsters arose from the ground, growling as they did so.
"Shit," Gwen cursed and she took a step back, holding her knife out in front of her. She could never protect herself against three of these beasts - not in her current state.
She threw a glance over her shoulder, to the torches in the distance, then looked back at the approaching nekkers. If she wanted to survive, she would have to run.
And run she did, stumbling and staggering and yelping in pain as she went. Her leg gave out more often than not as she tried her best to sprint towards what she hoped would be her salvation. She did not look back, using the sounds the monsters made in order to gauge how close they had come. She knew they could run faster, but she also knew, or at least she hoped, that they would lose interest sooner rather than later if they went too far from their nests.
A scream tore itself from her throat when a claw grabbed her, but even before she had stopped yelling, her body began to move by itself. She whirled around all of a sudden, causing the nekker to stumble a bit, and brought up her other hand. Without hesitation, she slammed her knife into the beast's skull, and again, and again, and again until the foul creature had stopped moving.
Breathing heavily, she got up and brushed her hands off her breeches. Ignoring the trembling of her body, she turned around and made for the torches again, limping heavily as she went. Those few days of rest had been for naught now, she realised when even the slightest pressure caused a spasm of pain to run through her whole leg.
And just when she thought things couldn't get any worse, the sounds of the earth rumbling and of nekker's growling appeared on her other side. She knew that this time she wouldn't be able to outrun them, but still she continued on her path, hoping for some miracle...
...which came in the form of arrows, pinning the monsters to the ground even before they had gotten the chance to straighten themselves.
Gwen remained where she stood and looked around her, but she could see no one else. She took a few small steps towards the torches, and once she passed one more tree on her left, leaning on it with her shoulder, she spotted the elf. He stood on top of a wooden platform built against another tree.
Exhausted, the half-elf took a few deep breaths before she waded through the water that kept growing deeper here, her hand pressed against the stone to her left for balance. Human gatherers and women stopped to watched her crawl out of the stream and onto the bank, but they made way when the elf who had rescued her walked over to her. When he arrived where she sat, he offered her a hand, and after a moment of hesitation Gwen accepted the assistance.
"Seherim, please fetch my supplies for me," he called out as he slung her arm across his shoulder and helped her through the field of herbs and berries.
Gwen had fallen asleep even before they could reach the elf's hut.