***** Author's Note *****
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97
"It's not too late to change your mind. You are welcome to stay with us, as long as you need," Bellora cupped Alaesia's cheek in one hand, tucking the younger woman's red hair into the hood of her cloak with the other. Beordon stood a little ways off, holding his daughter in a bundle of warm fur-lined blankets, waiting to offer his own supportive word to add to his wife's.
Alaesia tilted her head, fighting to give the healer, who'd cared so much for her over the course of the winter, a smile and failing miserably, "I can't..."
Even though Alaesia had yet to tell anyone, even her hosts, of all she had gone through, she didn't have to. Bellora knew; she had seen, however brief a glimpse during an examination, Alaesia's more intimate scars. She had seen what had been stolen from her poor, battered patient. At least on some intrinsic level, she saw Alaesia's pain, plain and clear, exactly for what it was; a bitter, hollowness for which Bellora had no remedy. If that knowledge came from motherly instinct, or the empathy solely from her human nature, Alaesia didn't know, but she was grateful to not have to speak it aloud.
The healer, who had watched her patient grow even more distant after she had given birth, nodded understandingly, "That burden is heavy, too heavy, for one so young to bear. My dear, please don't let blame or doubt weigh upon your shoulders, wherever your road may take you. And remember, you are not your scars."
The younger woman had to grip the satchel they had given her with both hands to keep them from shaking at Bellora's words. They stung, but in the way one might ache after poison is drawn from a wound; perhaps, if she had been just a little stronger, a little braver, she wouldn't feel the desperate need to leave this village. Maybe she would have been whole enough to believe the healer's kindness, or to look upon Bellora's newborn and not feel a stab in her own gut. She bowed her head, half for gratitude, half for shame, and murmured, "Thank you... For everything..."
"Alaesia."
The curt address made her jump; the Captain.
He approached astride a huge beast, dark as iron like its master. It huffed and pawed its hooves eagerly at the ground, tossing the long mane of hair, eager for morning patrol.
It almost reminded Alaesia of Grothraum, but far more fragile looking, despite its taller height. The creature didn't carry itself with the same predatory gleam in its eyes either. The way its eyes flicked and rolled unnerved Alaesia. It behaved far too much like prey for comfort.
"They are waiting for you at the gate. Now is not the time to dawdle," the man interrupted Alaesia's subdued musings.
"A moment longer won't add a day of travel, Tordoric," Bellora gave the captain a disapproving look.
"Perhaps not," the ice-eyed man didn't protest, only waiting until the young woman gave Bellora and Beordon each a small, guarded embrace before leading her down the muddy path to the gate.
At first, the Captain was quiet, only the sound of his horse's breath filling the cold air with clouds of vapor just before dawn, but eventually, he did slowly bring the steed back to walk alongside her.
"I owe you an apology. I was wrong to push you the way I did, to insinuate anything ill of your past and to not believe your word. I hope you can forgive an old solider for his suspicions..." If the girl acknowledged him, from under her hood, he didn't hear, so the Captain continued, "I did think it might comfort you to know, there's been nary hair nor track of any danger found by any of my scouts in the valley and there's yet to be word from the nearest villages of any marauders even though rumors usually start about now. You should be safe, at least til the flatlands. And as long as you stick to the road, my men will do their best to protect you, even from orcs."
The mention of those awful creatures seemed to be the trick to get her to look up at him.
Though hooded with a scarf obscuring most of her face, he could just see the flash of green in her eyes, "Thank you... Captain."
Whatever it was she would not say, he supposed he just had to accept her silence. But the frightened way she carried herself, like a deer about to bolt, and the haunted look that befell her face, when talks of raiding parties arose, was not something she could so easily hide. He knew, without words, she wanted to flee as far as possible; the farther from Mordor's borders, and its armies of goblins, the better. To join the spring caravan was but the means to put whatever past she had behind her. Who was he to stand in the way of that?
But, the Captain had not the heart to tell her how orcs had come to infest almost every dark crevice of the world; at least as far as his campaigns in the service of the Steward had ever taken him. Truly, it was an inescapable plague of evil. He could only give a small prayer in his heart that she would find sanctuary somewhere, perhaps far beyond even Gondor's borders.
"I've assigned Cyrel to look after you til Osgiliath and he can help you make arrangements to anywhere you wish to go from there—" For a wild woman, the Captain thought Alaesia to be eerily calm and reserved, but the mention of his guardsman evoked a withering look from that poison gaze of hers, "—I know you don't get along with him, but he's taken with responsibility and concern for your safety. If you need anything, he will see to it you are taken care of."
The spring caravan, venturing forth at the first sign the ground started to thaw, was a rather large group, comprised of merchants, a farmer here or there, youths on their way to start apprenticeships with distant relatives, a selection of guards, wagons of supplies and goods pulled by oxen, and Alaesia. While the location of the village provided a greater degree of safety to its residents, it also hindered most, if not all travel to and from for the majority of the winter season. So, having been cooped up and snowed in, many were excited and eager to stretch their legs. Chatter was kept hushed, but the general enthusiasm could not be stifled.
Alaesia kept close to the back of the train, keeping between a pair of the carts to offer her some degree of shelter from the prying eyes of the others. The hood of her cloak and the scarf Bellora had stitched together from an old curtain offered just a little comfort, casting her features in shadow.
Few, if any, of those in the caravan had seen or met Alaesia before, for how she'd hid away during her recovery, but everyone knew of her; the mysterious wild woman with more scars than a veteran soldier. There was little else she could do about the curious stares she occasionally caught in her direction. The whispering, however, reached her ears more than once.
"Best to just ignore it," Beordon had offered in encouragement before she departed, even repeating Bellora's words to drive home the message, "You are not your scars. Whatever others think, or say, or do, they don't know the true you. Their ignorance is theirs to bear, not yours. The Alaesia, who I have had the honor to get to know since you came to us, is a deeply empathetic girl, who cares so much for the well-being of others and the first person I've met whose as enthusiastic about bread as I am—" His words drew a faint smile from Alaesia, which only grew more genuine when Beordon gave her a small bundle of fresh bread, still warm from the oven. "—Keep your chin up and others will start to see the true you as well."
Much easier said than done.
A slip of her coverings, more often than not, would result in sharp recoils from any who looked upon her. It was practically unavoidable when making camp for the night; Alaesia had no choice but to work more closely with the other travelers, pitching tents, gathering wood, cooking meals, or generally keeping close enough to the fire to ward off frostbite— spring may have arrived in the daytime, but winter still stalked after sunset.
Everything about the caravan was conducted with such civility and orderliness, nothing at all like the chaos of an orc camp, yet Alaesia often found herself floundering to know what to do or how to be useful. And such proximity, the crowd and noise, the risk of being exposed to prying eyes, drove her to the edge of the encampment. There she could find a modicum of isolation and quiet to wait for daybreak and she might also avoid disturbing the others when Vezhir's shade came to torment her sleep.
She very nearly caused a panic the first night of their journey, mitigated only when Cyrel found allowing Alaesia to grasp his arm helped pull her from her nightmares. He had the bruises to show for it. She had expected him to try badgering her again, as he had back in the village, however, out here in the wilds, it seemed he put aside his petty desire to be an utter pest. Perhaps that came about out of pity, but more likely, she thought, it was due to his preoccupation with his duties.
The whole lot of the guards were focused and watchful of their surroundings. They ebbed and flowed in their horseback patrols around the caravan. Alaesia could see by how alert they were; it wasn't a matter of if they would be attacked, but when.
It was on the third night of their travels, having just settled into camp for the evening, that the warning horn was sounded.
One of their scouts, who had been patrolling down the road a ways, barreled back towards the caravan, blasting his horn in three short bursts. The sight of the guard, a black arrow embedded into the shoulder joint of his armor calling for his comrades, made the blood run chill in Alaesia's veins. The sound of his horn made every man, woman, and child present freeze for only a split moment, but it seemed to stretch into eternity until he barked the one word they had all been praying they wouldn't hear.
"ORCS!"
And suddenly, the camp was thrown into a frenzy.
Dinner's meager soup was forgotten in an instant. The youngest travelers of the group were gathered together and surrounded by able-bodied adults who took up whatever they could as weapons. A younger lad, just old enough to leave home on his own, tried to put on a brave face, clenching the knife, with which he had been cutting vegetables, between white knuckles. One merchant woman moved to a cart carrying the goods she planned to sell, only to be driven back by a guard ordering her to leave it.
And Alaesia... She was stuck. Her eyes turned to glass, as the sounds started to creep from the forest. She knew those sounds. Low at first, then louder. The cackle of a warg, the snarls and barked orders from a twisted orc mouth, fanged curses in Blackspeech, and the thud of a leather drum. It wasn't the sly strike of mere hunters; no, if they simply meant to take their prey and move on, the caravan never would have heard them coming. This was meant to stir the prey, spook them, scare them, toy with them, and scatter them for slaughter. These were the sounds of a warband sowing torment before they struck.
"—lass-a!"
She barely recognized the fact a voice was calling for her. Her mind was at the cusp of shuttering.
"—sia! You need to move!" It was Cyrel. He had cut across the camp at the sight of his charge frozen in fear, to grab her wrist and pull her in towards the group huddling in the center of the clearing.
The cooking fires had been doused, maybe to give the humans the chance to adjust their eyes to the darkness, or perhaps give them some cover of shadows, but Alaesia knew that was folly; if they could hear those predators lurking in the tall dark trees beyond, then those same predators could already see them as plainly as day for their cat-like vision. No nightfall would be enough to hide cowering human quarry.
An arrow launched from the darkness, narrowly grazing the gap between one guard's helmet and neck plates. More whizzed past burying barbed points in one man's arm. The boy wielding the knife had his small improvised weapon knocked from his grip with a clatter of sparks. Others thudded into the sides of the carts or pinged off the dinner cauldron. The hooting, raucous jeers grated the air like steel drawn across slate.
Alaesia tried burying her head in her hands, fighting herself, the urge to scream. That's what they wanted. Of course, that's what those beasts wanted. The cries and screams of their prey were as honey to a fly. Her tongue was fighting her throat, her mind was fighting her body, her instincts fighting reason, "Puzgat..."
The word started low. Hardly more than a whisper. Only then repeated, growing louder and more vicious with each repetition. "Puzgat! PUZGAT! PUZGAT!"
"Quiet! Be quiet!" Cyrel hissed, waving a hand at the other caravan members, "Someone, please, calm her down!"
He held himself at the ready; ready for whatever beasts would come charging upon them at any moment. Then he noticed it.
A silence had fallen across the forest, as if it was holding its breath.
Why had the arrows stopped? Cyrel's head swiveled around, trying to spy any movement through the sense tree trunks. At first nothing...
Then the screeches started again with a terrible vigor.
Cyrel and the other guards were as ready as they could possibly be. Their lives were all but guaranteed lost this night. They could have turned. They could have run. They might even save themselves in the process. But...
No more arrows shot through the dark. The cackling and roaring swelled somewhere out in the darkness only once more, traveling about the caravan in an arc, but falling silent, one voice at a time. Shouts gurgled and ceased. The drum clattered once final beat.
And then, everything was silent.
Cyrel's attention was torn. He needed to know just what had happened?! Where had the orcs gone? Since when did those beasts ever stop mid-hunt?! But in the same thought, came the prickling at the nape of his neck, when he finally glanced back at Alaesia. Just WHAT kind of incantation had this witch cast with her shouting?!
A moment passed, with no signs of their would-be attackers.
Then a minute. Not one member of the caravan dared breathe.
Five minutes.
A half hour.
Morning...
Not a single person slept that night, even though there was no more even the slightest hint of orcs about them. It was as if they simply never existed at all, save the few minor wounds sustained by a couple members of the company. But all minds were on Alaesia.
She could feel their stares. Hear their questions. See them vie to stay as far from her as the road would allow. She fell to the back of the caravan, wishing she could bury herself in a ditch alongside the path—
"Shield your eyes!" Cyrel suddenly appeared, moving back through the group to place himself firmly between Alaesia and the side of the road. He tried to reach for her hood, to pull it over her face... But he hadn't made it to her fast enough. The familiar smell took her immediately back to Mordor; the scent of blood, not iron like the red of humans but sharper and darker like sanguine ink, assaulted her senses.
The rest of the caravan's pace suddenly increased, hurrying past the gruesome sight Cyrel had tried to prevent Alaesia from witnessing.
The road was lined with death.
So that... THAT was what had become of the orcs. THAT was why they had fallen silent.
Carcasses, too scattered and too torn to know how many, were strewn along the ditch, across the path, and littered among the trees. Pools of that ink soaked into the melting snowpack and mud; torsos ripped open, spines separated from bodies, skulls pulverized, limbs mangled. Piles of flesh and bone dotted the ground.
"Close your eyes, Alaesia. Don't look! Just close your eyes, and I'll guide you through," Cyrel could hardly contain the bile rising in his own throat. This was truly beyond any nightmare he could have comprehended! And yet, the woman stared, as if she couldn't tear her eyes away, from one horror in particular; a foul, orc head, mounted on a spear made entirely of iron.
No one spoke. How silent their chatter had become in the wake of everything they had witnessed. None, moreso than Alaesia.
"I can take you back... to the village," Cyrel had offered, if only to get her to move, for she had rooted in place at the sight, "You'll be safe there. You can forget all of this and be safe."
She had not responded and he thought her near dead from shock.
No one wanted to stop either, but necessity set the pace. Camp that night was set up as tightly quartered as possible. The men, both guards and peasantry alike, kept their weapons ready at all times. Guards took extra shifts to keep eyes upon the dark woods around them. A kindly farm mother did the best she could with trembling hands to make a meal to chase away the evil scorched to each of their minds.
But Alaesia could not bring herself to their fold. Not because she was crazed, not because she was numb to their fears, not because she knew they thought she was to blame for some dark magic — The thought made part of her almost laugh; Zathra had once claimed she had a magic of her own. Perhaps he had been right.
No, none of that was what led her to slip beyond the light of the small cooking fire the caravan huddled around. It was visage of the orc head posted alongside the road like a terrible trophy, that made her feet carry her into the woods. There, the shadows swallowed her from sight.
If Cyrel tried to find her again, it would be as if she disappeared, like a wraith unto the grave.
She wandered onward, compelled by some foolish, perhaps even delusional, hope. Her heart was weeping, praying even, that she was not wrong. The orc head, in the midst of that horrible massacre, had been mounted on an iron spear.
No... Not a spear.
A bolt.
A ballista bolt as tall as a man.
That was what her wilding mind hoped it had been.
Please, she wanted to scream to the sky. I need you! I need you...
Now, well and truly alone, well beyond the camp, her heart began to quicken. Dark shades started to come to her like serpents tasting fear on their tongues. Something passed between her and the moon, plunging Alaesia, for just a moment, into complete darkness.
***** Translations *****
Puzgat - Stop