Early 1420 S.R.
Somewhere east and south of Mirkwood
I leave puzzles all over behind me as I make my way slowly east and south. The elves know there was an orc lingering around the palace for a while, I think. Many times I had to dodge their trackers as I watched their skinworkers from a distance and learned a new method of tanning that will suit well for travel or when I settle elsewhere, if I live that long. It must have puzzled them that I never attacked even when I could have caught one alone. There were times when my tracks and an elf's path overlapped, but I always left them alone.
I left several months later, taking a mistakenly abandoned and very nice pair of freshly-made walking boots and leaving a gold coin behind. I never paid attention before, but my coins are of different metals and have all sorts of different markings on them. The metal I understand. Gold is worth more than silver, which is worth more than copper. The markings I do not. None looked elflike to me, so I hope I paid a decent amount to whoever made the boots. That would have been another puzzle for them, and months later still I smile to myself at the memory as I come upon someone's small farm in the middle of nowhere.
Mirkwood forest is far behind me now. I linger, watching the old tark man do something to the dirt. There is, for a brief moment, the urge to kill the weakling, then it's gone again. I still must struggle with my breeding, instinct and training, but it's easier now.
I watch from under the brim of my hat. My helm is tucked into my pack for the moment. The old tark's got both legs, but he's badly lame. He'd be an easy kill - no… It is a struggle for him as he bends over some tool with which he's moving the dirt. It's not a hoe, shovel or scythe. I made all three at least once and sold them to other tribes or traders. We didn't farm. What's this tool, then? Suddenly it catches on a rock. Is he alone here? Is there no one more fit to this task? I watch him bend to remove the rock, tossing it onto a pile of others with casual strength. Naught wrong with his arms, then. I watch him struggle until dusk, then he steps out from behind the thing and goes into what I take to be his dwelling after drawing water from a well just outside the dwelling. The safer thing would be to leave, but I find some inexplicable, unfamiliar urge stirring in me and that isn't what I do.
I wait until dark falls and step across the wall behind which I've been lying and watching. I walk through the field and see his task is only about a third done. No sound comes from anywhere in the area. He has no animals with him? I have passed other farms where some four-legged creature vaguely like a wolf set up an almighty racket when I got close although I never stopped. I do some more of the work for him while the whiteface is up and after it sets. My tracks are undoubtedly all over his field, but he'll have a far easier time of it tomorrow when he comes out to discover there's only a narrow strip left for him to do. Let that be a pretty puzzle for him.
An hour before the yellowface shows, I leave his farm and make my way to a stand of trees such as occasionally appear on this generally open, flat land. I eat a little of the last meat I smoked, take a swig from a waterskin and tuck myself into the shadow of the largest tree to sleep, wrapping my cloak around me.
It seems no sooner have I dozed off than I'm roused by uneven footsteps on the other side of the copse. They stop. I'm caught. There's no way for me to get out without him knowing it. I should have just left when I had the chance… Hands on my weapons in case the tark attacks, I wait. Suddenly I hear a scrape of metal on dirt, then a clunk and slight slosh. Then the footsteps retreat. What? Speaking of pretty puzzles…
I wait until I can just barely hear the sounds of field clearing again before I move to where his steps stopped. It seems he shared his breakfast as I find a battered metal pot with a mixture of sausage, eggs and some grainy stuff I've never seen before, and a small bottle of something white. I scoop up the meat and grain with my hands. It's unexpectedly delicious or perhaps I'm just hungry. Any way it's soon gone. I dredge the pot with my fingers until I can't get to even a single piece more. The white stuff in the bottle is another indescribable treat, cool and thick. It leaves something on my lips when I've drained the bottle and I lick it off. It occurs to me if he has no livestock he must have paid someone for this. He doesn't seem to have much. I would like to clean his dishes. It somehow seems the thing to do, but there's no readily available water source I dare try to reach, so from behind the tree I wait until the old man's back's turned, leave his pot and bottle on the wall along with a few copper coins and leave before he changes his mind or decides to call whoever lives nearby. Who would believe him if he tells them an orc cleared a large part of his field and didn't attack him when it could have? He must know, though, because although I'm not wearing the boots people usually associate with orc track telltales and my tracks are smaller than a grown tark's, no youngling could do the work I did.
August 1421
Sparsely populated plains
I have continued to wander east and southward slowly and so far aimlessly and seen no one and nothing for several days. I've killed several bands of highwaymen, even caught one in the act of trying to rob some tark, but that was several days ago and I didn't stick around to talk after clearing his way. It never would have occurred to me before the end of the war that I'd be glad for a sight of trees, but the thought occurs to me now as I drink the last of the water in my skins. Careful as I've been with it, it wasn't careful enough. Trees often enough mean water and I need some badly now. I'm almost out of food, too, so I need a deer or a boar so I have enough to smoke and last a while.
I don't get it today. I shoot several rabbits and eat them raw, tucking their skins into my nearly empty pack for later tanning. I have come to prefer my food cooked, but today I hope for extra nourishment from the blood that's usually lost during the cooking process. I should have known better, though. As tasty as bloodswill might be, it doesn't do well at satisfying a thirst. Neither does this. If anything it makes me even more thirsty as I now must deal with a sticky mouth. As I suck dry the last bit of marrow from the last rabbit, I contemplate my course to this point. Why have I gone east and south? Mordor was there, but so what? At first it was to avoid the elves no doubt swarming around Dol Guldur and indeed all over Mirkwood - or what is it they call it now? I don't know. I heard they renamed it, but I never caught what they call it now. I stayed too far away to hear them clearly. If I could hear them, they could hear me if I sighed or shifted my feet under me. I also needed to get into a less populated area. If I don't want to fight, I'd best not be seen by those who'd kill me, and I'd best stay away from any temptation to fall back on my breeding. Yet now I find myself lonely for any company at all and if even if it takes a threatened fight for my life to see another face, I'd deal with it.
I contemplate the question some more as the sun sets. There's no whiteface tonight, only hundreds, thousands, millions of pinpricks of light high above and seeming to go on endlessly until sky and ground meet at some far point beyond the edge of my sight. I lie on my back, wrapped in my cloak, watching these dancing sparkles of light. Then they begin to show in streaks. Some of them seem so close, as if I could reach up and touch them. I almost dig into my pack for one of the oddities I brought from the mountain. I have a sudden urge to paint this scene. Why? I keep watching and finally draw my attention back to the original question
Why am I going this way now? I ask myself the question again as I continue to watch the streaking lights. I started seeing a smudge to the southeast an hour or so back before I stopped and a greener one to the south and west. Every time the wind blew from that way the rank smell of a marsh was brought to me. Water there, yes, but drinkable? Both are yet too far to identify for sure, but are plainly big. The one southeast draws me more strongly for some reason. I guess because I have nowhere else to go, in addition to the other reasons, I think to myself. May as well find out what it is, why I feel drawn to it.
There's a sudden high-pitched shrieking, then a boom as something strikes the earth, the light of its passing so bright that I must slit my eyes against it. I listen to the silence after the boom - a silence so profound that only when they are silent do I notice I have been listening to chirping insects all night without paying them any mind: crickets I think they're called. I rarely if ever heard them in Mirkwood. The silence there was always impenetrable. Gradually they begin to chirp again. Nothing else happens except that the lights gradually cease to streak. Yet I notice there are still millions of pinpricks high above and I watch them until I fall asleep. I haven't had a rest in days and I need a few hours' sleep whether I want it or not.
My dreams are strange. Flashbacks of my best forge work are mixed with memories of the streaking lights. Not even the rising of the yellowface disturbs me for several hours. I have a vague memory of rolling over and burying my head in the grass. Finally though a call of nature forces me from my sleep and I rise to relieve it, putting on my wide-brimmed hat and pulling up my hood against the light despite the heat this leaves me to suffer. A sound infringes on my vague thoughts as I look off toward the smudge on the horizon, a rhythmic, rising and falling sound something like screams. It's in the direction I have to go anyway, so I check it out.
It's a stiflingly hot day and the yellowface beats down mercilessly. It takes longer than I thought it might. Apparently many things carry across plains, sound not the least of them. The smudge on the horizon has come no closer. When I reach the sound I see a crater in the ground with strange colors in it. It's still radiating heat. This must be where the boom came from last night. The colors catch my interest, but there is no time to study them now. The sound does indeed turn out to be screaming. There is a small, thin, weak-looking creature on the ground curled up around itself. I don't understand what I'm seeing at first. I see the creature is bleeding from one of its tiny shoeless feet, red droplets on the ground leading away from the crater until it seems to have fallen again. The creature flails in its agony now and I note something about one of its hands; it's blistering. That's not so strange to me. A smith knows burns. And then I realize the creature looks like a miniature tark. I think I understand now.
The tiny tark must have come to look at the crater after hearing that sound last night, too, cut itself on something sharp, fallen and hit the still sizzling sand. What should I do? Should I do anything? Surely the tark has a sire or - what's the word for the female? Dam? They can't be far. This tark's sending up a racket that can probably be heard for a mile. But no, I look around and see no one coming, no one close by, and there is nothing to distract from the flatness of the plain except for that enticing smudge on the southeastern horizon. What am I supposed to do?
The easiest thing to do would be to just kill the tarklet, my instinct says. Easiest and safest. I could even make it quick with my mace, then be gone and there'd be none the wiser until far too late. That voice I only started hearing after the end of the war is talking again, though, telling me I can't do that, telling me I shouldn't, telling me it's what I'd have done during the war and I don't have to do things just as I would have.
*I'm supposed to risk my life for this tarklet? It's all I've got left.*
Yes. You are the only one who can now. Just get the tarklet back to its people and keep your face hidden.
*Why?*
Because it's the opposite of what you would have done three years ago.
Good point, strange voice. Perhaps the softness of my voice will help now. It is not so harsh as many orcish voices, so I approach the tarklet, kneel behind it and croon wordlessly as I reach for a bandage in my pack and press it against the wounded foot. The Tarklet didn't see me coming in its distraction and shrieks again at the touch, but I remain still after tying the bandage off and continue to croon. Perhaps out of sheer exhaustion the screams become moans then fall almost silent. As carefully as I can I wrap the blistered hand, too, causing a brief uptick in the pained noises, but the tarklet's strength to fight is nil next to mine and I manage to restrain its struggling without being too forceful. I need water. I know almost nothing of healing, but even I know that these wounds must be washed if they aren't to fester. The tarklet is looking at me now, though between the hood and the hat it can't see my face.
"Where is water?" I use my softest voice, no more than a whisper.
The tarklet points back to the southwest. "I can't walk," it says, its voice a trembling whisper. "It hurts so. I want my mommy. I'm not s'posed to be out here."
Then I see water leaking from its eyes as it moans again, making sounds I remember from my last days in the mountain where I lived so many years, if somewhat softer. Others do this?
I take off one of my mail gauntlets and brush the water away, my calloused and scarred flesh catching on what I realize is very supple, soft skin on the tarklet. I lick the water off my finger once, but it's salty just like the water my eyes once leaked and doesn't help my thirst at all. Moved by some impulse I don't understand, I keep brushing the water off as it leaves the tarklet's eyes even though it's of no use to me, using the softest, lightest, most delicate touch I can manage. Finally the water ceases to flow and the tark falls completely silent, its breath slowing as it relaxes somewhat. I wonder if it is still conscious as I lean over it. Yes, it is, its grey eyes half open though somehow looking drowsy.
"Your mommy?" I ask, wondering silently what a mommy is. Again it points southwest. Find water and mommy at the same time, it seems to suggest.
"I'm going to pick you up and take you to your mommy," I say quietly, hesitating over the unfamiliar word. A nod is the only answer, so I put the gauntlet back on and lift the little tark as if it were something fragile, laying the blistering hand on its chest, getting both my arms underneath its body and letting it rest its weight against my chest. One of my hands holds the injured arm still and I try not to jostle the tiny thing as I move, taking care that my stride lurches less than usual. I feel something against my left breast and look down to realize the tarklet has pressed its face into my cloak. It wrinkles its nose and lifts it out again, then inexplicably puts it back where it was. Perhaps my mate's thoughts on bathing had something to them indeed. I haven't been able to do it since I hit this stretch of plains. Must do it again as soon as I find water. I notice dimly that the tarklet has gone limp in my arms and is snoring slightly, causing the warg fur of my cloak to flutter.
Soon enough, though definitely more than a mile away I see a small cluster of wooden dwellings without so much as a log wall around them. I scoff inwardly and think briefly that this would be an easy village to raid, then remember I don't have to do that anymore.
"Is this the place?" The question is of course directed to the tarklet in my arms. The face comes off my cloak and the tarklet blinks. It had indeed fallen asleep as I carried it. It looks around after blinking awake and nods. I carry it into the village and am about to turn toward the well when I hear another voice, this one first relieved and then frantic with worry.
"Garion! Oh, Gary, my son!" The tarklet is suddenly swept from my grasp by a whirlwind of tark woman, her long brown hair flying, coming out of the pins she'd used to restrain it. I dimly see one of the pins fly free and land by a doorway. Before I can react at all, I hear the tarklet - no Garion, I suppose that's a name - acknowledge the woman as "Mommy!"
"What happened to you?" The woman asks. Garion's answer is a torrent of very rapid speech that passes by in a blur, then I realize it's not the common language. The woman looks at me. Before she can ask me anything, I speak.
"I had no water, woman. I wrapped them to stop the bloodflow, but his foot and his hand are injured and must be cleaned before you tend them further." My voice is of necessity louder than it was with the tarklet and she stares at me briefly but suspiciously. Whatever she thinks she recognizes is of little import to her for the moment, lost in the information I imparted. She just tells me where the well is and to bring her some. I watch where she takes Garion and suddenly a metal pot comes clattering across the yard from that same doorway. I take time to have a single dipper of water for myself and bring her the entire pot filled to brimming.
The inside of the dwelling is small. It's no more than a hut, really, with very rough furnishings. The most interesting thing to me is an old but well-tended sword over the mantle with a curious device of seven stars engraved on its hilt. I've never seen the device. The tark woman plainly has some knowledge of healing as she competently begins to clean the wounds, much to Garion's discomfort. I think to retreat before one of the men of the village returns - perhaps the wielder of that sword I was just ogling, but he grabs my hand with his good one and though I'm wearing my gauntlets, he refuses to let go of it. I've never done anything like this, but I let him squeeze and squeeze. The woman doesn't even look at me until she's finished treating the wounds and she freezes in shock. Too late do I realize that I forgot to put the hood of my cloak back up after I had my drink.
I expect her to shriek and run out of the house shrieking, raising whoever else is here to arms. I expect her to get the sword and try to slice me open before I can even get to my own weapons. They're very much in evidence, a mace at my hip in a worn leather harness, two knives in ankle sheaths, a bow and full quiver. She doesn't, though, and the only reason I can think is that I have clearly had many chances to harm both her and her tarklet - son, I think I heard her call him, son, yes, and have not done so - have done quite the opposite in fact. She stares and stares. Garion is staring too now that he can spare the concentration to sate his curiosity about the stranger who rescued him.
"You're an orc," the woman says flatly. It's a statement spoken with as much conviction as if she'd said water's wet. "I thought so when you spoke."
"I thought orcs were mean, mommy?" Garion says.
I have no idea what to say or do. There's no point denying it when it's perfectly plain. "I will leave now and trouble you no more," I offer.
"You'll do no such thing, orc," the woman says stoutly despite the fear I see in her deep-blue eyes. I realize dimly this is the first time I've ever looked at a tark without having to suppress the urge to kill it. Her fear is fading as she looks back into mine, looking very deeply in fact, as if she's looking right into my soul, seeing both what I have done and might be becoming. I let her look. I have nothing to hide. I hope she sees clearer than I do. I'm still confused.
"I owe you at the very least a good meal for what you've done for me and mine," she finally continues after a long minute's silence in which we study one another. "But you'll have to be gone before Adrahil - he's my new husband - gets back in two days. He'll never believe the truth of this. I'd never have believed it if I hadn't just experienced it myself."
"The others -"
"My mother and sister. They won't trouble you if you leave them alone." She cuts me off. They rarely leave their houses."
"What's the other building?"
"A tannery, though none of us have the skill to work it since Danny died last May - Ah, I see that interests you. What's your name, orc?"
"Garlakh."
"Leanne. Now you just sit there."
I yield to this formidable tark woman for reasons I can't explain. Every instinct I have says to run. I'm surprised by the fact that this time, there's no thought of killing the tarks at all before I do the running the instinct urges. I have what might be the best meal of my life. The tark woman had prepared a pot of stew for herself and her son, but she pulls out a ham and bakes it for me as well, though I don't ask her to do it. She also bakes some kind of round flatbread. I gorge myself on some of all of it, bathe as best I can with a pot of water, then go off to sleep in the tannery. The darkness and smell of the hides left there from the last occupant is comforting and it's the best sleep I've had in years.
When I wake a few hours later, I have a proper look around and note that several projects are unfinished, but the tannery is not short on supplies. I sew together someone's sheath - a sheath embossed with that same seven-star device, I note. Then I see pieces for shoes that seem as if they might fit little Garion, some pieces for a couple of larger pairs of boots, pieces of a pack and a belt that looks like it's perfect to hold the sheath. I feel almost whole, the slide of thread through awl, awl through hide, and the feel of the catch as the stitches are completed bonding two pieces of hide together being very comforting and pleasantly distracting. I miss the forge, but this will do for today.
Leanne turns up at what turns out to be mid morning. She brings a late breakfast and catches me working on the small shoes. They are indeed for her Garion, who I learn is something she calls a stepson. Apparently tarks mate for life one male to one female, but when one dies early they might remarry and bring the offspring from a previous mating into the new union. I don't know why she's speaking so openly to me, but since she is I listen all day as she tells me of her life while I finish the rest of the items in between a couple more very delicious meals. Garion will be fine, though he will likely have a scarred hand from his burns.
I finish and go out to hunt, feeling the need to replenish what I used of their supplies before I go with the sun. I have not forgotten her advice to be gone before her husband returns. I bring down a sizeable if unfamiliar animal and return to find a man where I expected Leanne. He's tall and broad-shouldered, with long dark hair and grey eyes much like Garion's. This must be her husband Adrahil back earlier than expected. Where is she? Where's Garion, for that matter? I think I hear two tark's voices, one old and cracking. She and her son must both be with her mother. If so she'll not have had time to talk to her man yet, or perhaps he refused to believe her as she thought he might. Given the man hasn't even put his pack down yet, I suspect the first. It's completely irrelevant, though, as he sees me and immediately draws his battered old sword. I am forced to drop the carcass unbutchered and flee for my life, dodging crossbow bolts once I'm out of sword range.
Suddenly a voice booms out behind me and another smaller one speaks shortly thereafter, "Adrahil, stop!"
"Daddy, no!"
I'm soon beyond crossbow range and thankful he hasn't got a longbow. There are no footsteps behind me. I hope he does listen to them, for it's quite a tale. Poor tark's in for a shock all right.
I make my way back to the crater and pick up some of the strange rocks and bits of glass I find, tucking them into a pouch, then continue on toward that smudge.