The sun was quickly leaving them. The rain had gotten better, but Aharenor would have gladly dealt with a downpour in the day than a drizzle in the dark. It was hard enough carrying a person in his arms, but to do so without being able to see where one stepped was making it much worse. But he loped onwards despite the dark, despite the weight he carried, and despite the creeping thought that it might all be for nought.

He had no idea how far Buttermilk had carried them before she'd fallen. Far enough to escape the orcs? Perhaps. But there was the possibility that the ambushers had run after them, and were still running after them. There would be little to stop them from tracking their lost quarry.

Well, besides the rain and unless they were too full, of course.

It was a morbid thought, and it summoned up images of what Aharenor had seen in the camp. Once Hithaer had dropped, another arrow, one that must have been meant for him, had gone sailing past his head. He'd turned around, not yet realising what was happening, to find an orc pouncing down on him from the trees like a wild-cat. It had taken him to the ground, brandished a knife, and very nearly cut him belly to chin. Aharenor had saved himself by landing a kick to its groyne before it could gut him. But as he'd turned onto his stomach and began scrambling away from the beast, it flailed out at him and slashed him across his shoulder. A short wound, but far from shallow, he'd screamed from the pain. All he remembered of what happened next was the blur of trees and the feeling of flying as he ran back towards the camp. He'd been shouting, desperately, that they were under attack, that the enemy was coming from the trees, that the enemy had bows and blades and were orcs.

It had all been for naught. As he ran, he'd watched as orcs rushed the camp from the forest surrounding, latching onto men and pulling the camp-goers out of their tents. They had come in such numbers and with such speed that there was little time for the soldiers to organise themselves. The massacre had been inevitable.

The orcs that had killed Hithaer and ambushed him must have joined their brethren, for when Aharenor turned to look behind him he saw his pursuers were gone. He at once realised he had the opportunity to run off into the depths of the forest, away from the camp, away from the orcs, and away from the dead and the dying.

A part of him wanted to. It was pounding its fists against him and begging him to preserve himself, to ensure that there would be at least one survivor to tell the families of the dead what had happened to their kin. At least, that was the excuse that it made for him.

But a bitter guilt had slipped in and cast out. It reminded him of his fiancé, who he had parted from that evening on worse terms than usual, and who was still in the camp. Was she huddled in her tent, listening to the carnage in fear? Or worse, was she being torn apart as the other camp-goers were?

No, Aharenor could not have left her. He would have to at least try to find her. His conscience (and honour) demanded it.

So, he had snuck to their tents while the orcs and soldiers fought, using the forest's edge as cover. It had been with a heavy heart that he had found Otholdis' tent ripped open and assumed the worst. She had been carried off, he thought. That, or dragged somewhere else in the camp and killed. He'd whispered a little prayer in her memory and decided he had best get going. He had no knowledge of fighting or swordsmanship and would have been of little help to the camp had he stayed, he reasoned.

So he'd snuck through the tree line once more, thinking that if his luck was good Buttermilk would still be tied up with the rest of the camp's mounts. It had been with a strange dissatisfaction that he had found Otholdis amongst the horses.

As he trudged through the rain and the dark now far from the camp and the slaughter, with Otholdis clinging to him like a tick, he wondered if perhaps it would have been wise to make her ride her own mount.

Caught up in the thought of it, he forgot to mind his feet and stumbled over a rock. Otholdis fell from his arms, and he on top of her.

"Ah! Get off! Get off of me!" She shouted, pounding on his chest.

"Sorry!" He said breathlessly, struggling to find some purchase on the muddy ground and stand himself up. He got halfway to his knees before slipping and landing back down on his fiancé. Aharenor gasped as he felt the gash on his shoulder flex open. With the rush of pain followed all of the other sensations that his adrenaline had fended off up until that moment. His legs were burning. His arms were weak from carrying his betrothed. The rain had left every bit of him clammy and cold. It all came upon him in such an instant that he felt close to fainting.

Aharenor rolled off of Otholdis onto his belly and squeezed his eyes shut as he felt the chill wetness of the ground soak through his already drenched tunic.

"We should stop and rest for a moment," he said, teeth chattering. Whether it was from the cold or the pain, he did not know.

"Stop? But what of the orcs? What if they're not far? If we stop, they might find us!" Said Otholdis.

"They'll also find us if we tire ourselves to the point that we can no longer walk. We'll take a rest and then continue on."

In truth, Aharenor did not know if he would have even been able to stand had he needed to. As soon as he'd laid himself down an all-consuming fatigue had overtaken him and left his limbs feeling numb and heavy. It took most of his will to pull himself into a sit at the base of the nearest tree.

How long had it been since the attack on the camp? Minutes, hours? It must have been quite some time, for Aharenor recalled it had very nearly been sunset when they'd left, and now it was very nearly night. They had fled north, and buttermilk had carried them at least several miles before falling. From there, Aharenor guessed that he and Otholdis must have walked one more. Or rather, he must have walked one more. That would have taken some time, perhaps an hour or so.

He turned to Otholdis.

"Your foot, does it still hurt?" He asked.

Otholdis, who had sat herself beside him, looked down at her ankle and whimpered.

"Yes, quite terribly," she said. She wiggled it left and right and winced. "I'll have to be carried again. I'm sure of it."

Aharenor would have groaned if he didn't think he'd get a tongue-lashing for it. Carrying Otholdis had been a pain. He was a fair bit larger than her, and she was by all accounts a lithe little woman, but the slight weight of her had grown and grown as he'd walked until it felt as if he were carrying a boulder in his arms. And with his injury…

"I think we'll have to bandage my shoulder," said Aharenor. "Before we continue on, I mean."

Otholdis looked at him.

"Bandages? But, Aharenor, we have no bandages, and there's nothing out here that we could use. Why, we'd have to-"

Aharenor's eyes went to the girdle at her waist. She clutched it instinctively.

"No," she snapped.

"Otholdis…" began Aharenor.

"No, no! Oh, but this was a gift from my cousin! I-I couldn't soil it like that. Surely there is something else we could use, something less valuable," she reasoned, her grip on the fabric growing tighter.

Aharenor simply stared at her. He did not look cross, not disappointed, not even surprised. He just looked convinced. Completely and utterly convinced. Of what, Otholdis could not gauge. It almost frightened her. Aharenor's voice came out still and unwavering.

"Very well. I suppose I'll just have to tear a strip from my tunic. It makes no difference, I suppose," he said.

Otholdis nodded, feeling a little uneasy at the air he had about him, and watched as Aharenor took the bottom of his tunic in hand and, with a sigh, ripped off the decorative cloth that lined the hem. It took a small effort, but his shoulder wept blood from it all the same. When he'd gotten a sizable strip, he tore it from the rest of the fabric and handed it to Otholdis. With that he turned around so that his shoulder faced her. Otholdis stared dumbly down at the wound.

"How do I bandage it?" Asked Otholdis. She looked between the make-shift bandage and the dripping gash, unsure of herself.

Aharenor blanked.

"I… don't know," he said. At once, the two of them realised that they had neither the knowledge nor skill for such a thing. Then came the realisation that they had no knowledge of trekking, nor foraging, nor camping, nor cookery. Aharenor was embarrassed to realise that he couldn't even remember the last time he'd lit his own fire. Before, there had always been servants and attendants, those who were kept around to spare him the labour of doing tasks that men of his rank were above. At home, his family had employed a small group of staff to see to the needs of the household. In the camp, there had been Otholdis's maid, Hildy, to do such things. But out in the wilds of Mordor…

Goodness. Were he and his fiancé really so helpless?

Aharenor thought hard on what sort of thing a healer would do in their circumstances. They would speak in wise, low tones and use strange words like "tincture" "decoction" and "prescription." They'd also likely wave a bunch of nasty-smelling plants around before making them into a tea. But he and Otholdis had neither "decoctions" nor a fire to boil water with.

"I suppose you should… take some leaves? Yes, some nice clean leaves? And… and place them over the cut. Or perhaps moss? Would moss work?" Said Aharenor, imagining what could be done without teas or tinctures.

"I'm not sure that's-" began Otholdis.

"Well try that. And then wrap it all up with the cloth," said Aharenor, trying to sound more confident than he was. Leaves, mosses and cloth…. It at least seemed like the sort of things a healer would use. So, Otholdis hobbled around on her knees and did her best to pick out what looked like the cleanest leaves from nearby bushes, and the plushest moss from off stones. When she'd gathered what she thought would be enough to cover the wound, she had Aharenor show his back to her, placed them over the cut, gave them a good patting down, and wrapped the cloth under Aharenor's arm and over his shoulder. Aharenor winced and whimpered through it all. Once Otholdis finished it off in the sloppiest knot that had ever been tied, and took a little hobble backwards to look at her work. It was… less than pretty. She supposed it was her good luck that it was somewhere Aharenor could not see it. If it wasn't, he probably would have torn it off and insisted he do it himself.

She sat back down beside him and settled in more closely than she would have dared a day prior. To be so close and to feel the warmth of his arm against her own was a strange thing, but she found she had neither the energy nor the will to bother over it.

"What shall become of us Aharenor?" Asked Otholdis.

"Soldiers. Soldiers will come to rescue us once they find the travelling party. They will come and take us back to Minas Tirith," said Aharenor. He had laid his head back against the trunk behind him and was gazing up at the leaves. "Yes. Yes, it's only a matter of time."

"Will they?" Asked Otholdis.

"Of course they will," said Aharenor, but the tremor in his voice betrayed him. It was difficult to believe in while in the middle of an orc infested forest. Easy to hope for, yes, but very difficult to believe in. But then his mind began to wander. It wandered to the camp, and to their journey, to the reason for it, and finally, to the hours he had spent in preparation for their meeting with the Free men of Nurn.

At the time, he'd thought that having to memorise the paths the King's men took had been unnecessary, or, if not unnecessary, then at least a bit over-cautious. Yes, the comings and goings of soldiers were quite important to the Nurn-folk, and with their people's sovereignty so uncertain it was understandable, but goodness!

He fought to remember the maps he'd studied at the behest of his superiors, those that he'd always been familiar with and those whose contents had been explained to him in hushed tones.

He recalled what he could of the patrols that travelled near the west of Mordor. There were few soldiers that they might run into where they were, but, if they were lucky…

"Rangers! If we rode three or so miles north, then walked one more, that would put us not far from one of the Rangers' paths! In fact, if they've been maintaining their schedules, they should pass through in…"

Three days.

Three days! Aharenor shivered. There was no guarantee that they'd be able to survive for a night, let alone three days! And that was if they'd even be able to make the walk there. It was a small distance, but there was no telling what sort of nasties were hiding out in the forest. And of course, finding the path would be its own challenge. It would not be much different in appearance than a deer trail!

"Orcs. I can't imagine it, Aharenor. Orcs. I thought they were dead. Or, that most of them were, at least. The rangers were supposed to have done a very good job of cleaning up Mordor. It makes you wonder what all those campaigns were for," said Otholdis. She was mumbling to herself, a slight shake in her voice. "If I had been in the camp, oh… oh goodness." Her voice was so beaten flat that it hardly sounded like her at all.

"Hildy," she breathed.

"What?"

"Hildy, I-I-" Otholdis's lips went slack and her eyes bulged and suddenly she looked as if she'd been brained. "I sent her off into the middle of camp to fetch water. She's dead, isn't she? Oh they're all dead! And we, we, we're going to-"

Otholdis cried. It was coughing and retching and choking all tied into one, pitiful sound that came gurgling out of her like a hairball out of a cat.

It scared Aharenor.

He had seen her cry many times before, usually dry tears that were meant to pry open his heart to whatever he had denied her. He'd learned to ignore her when she did such things, or even call her bluff. But the person before him was an entirely different one from the bitter, scheming woman of the past six months. She had a naked sadness about her that he had only seen from her once before. It was that same, sorry look of abject she'd had when she'd confronted him about the letters to his lover. Sitting beside her in the mud, it cut into him just as much as it did then.

He cursed and pitied her at the same time.

Maybe her tears were for Hildy. Maybe they were for the camp. Maybe (and most likely) they were for herself. It mattered not, for she looked so earnestly miserable that at once Aharenor was compelled to pull her close to him. So strong was the compulsion that he didn't think twice before doing so.

He couldn't have said that it was an entirely unselfish thing. He was in a horrid state of woe himself and would have hugged a leper if it had meant having someone to hold onto. Just as the pain from his shoulder had settled in, so had the terror of it all, and now it was sending him shivering and shaking and dripping from his nose. So, he pulled her in and squeezed her tight with the sort of desperate grip a child latches onto a stuffed doggy with. It startled him how he clung to her, and he wondered if he should be doing such a thing lest Otholdis come swinging at him like a cat.

Otholdis froze at once and hiccupped fiercely, but soon she loosened up and her tears found their way back out and her head drooped down onto Aharenor's shoulder. If she forgot about his unfaithfulness, and how their party had been slaughtered by monsters, and the rain, and the cold, and her maybe-broken ankle, then laying up against him while he held her in his arms almost felt… well…good.

But still not in the way she knew it should. There was the warmth and the pleasant feeling of having some solid to lean against, but that was it.

Nevertheless, she found that she was comfortable enough to sob into his tunic, all while he shook and gulped air and tried to hide his own weeping.

They sat that way together until their limbs grew stiff and painful and they reluctantly pulled away from each other. Neither could find the will to say they had better get up and continue onward, so they waited in silence as the sun crept below the horizon.

Aharenor woke with a start.

"Aharenor! Aharenor!" Whispered Otholdis. She was shaking him with the sort of vigour that bade ill tidings.

"Wuh?" Groaned Aharenor. In the split second before sleep and wakefulness, he did not know where he was. There came the question in his mind of what Otholdis was doing in his tent, and why he was so cold, and wet, and in pain. He'd had the strangest dream of flying over the Ephal Duath and landing on a sheepskin in Rohan where a great shadow was waiting for him. He should have been afraid of it, but it had exuded such a warmth that he'd felt nothing but contentment. It had welcomed him and-

"Something is out there Aharenor!" Whispered Otholdis. Aharenor was fully pulled from his sleep and left wondering what it was he'd just been dreaming of. Otholdis had a grip on his arm and was looking out towards the dark of the night. It was pitch black save for the small beams of moonlight that shone down through the forest canopy. From the distance came the sound of footsteps. Large ones.

Aharenor prayed that it was a soldier, a ranger, some lucky survivor from the party. He knew that it was likely none of those.

Out of the dark came a figure, tall and lopsided. Its eyes shone like a cat's. Or rather its eye. Aharenor noticed that it was missing one.

The beast was large, much larger than the ones they had seen while fleeing the camp. It was the size of a man and the colour of old tallow. When it moved into the streak of moonlight that lit up the ground in front of them, they saw that it was missing its left arm, right up to its shoulder. In fact, the whole left side of the orc looked like it had been afflicted by whatever had done away with its limb. Its skin was raw and tender there, so much so that-

The beast stepped even closer. It was clear that it could see them now, for its one eye went wide and a smile crept across its face. Its face was ghastly, formed in such a way that every crease and sunken place caught shadows. Otholdis squeezed Aharenor's arm a little tighter.

"Hullo," said the orc.