Chapter 59

August 28th, TA 3020

The cloak stank of horse and man-sweat, but Mehreen took what was proffered without as much as a wrinkle of her nose. "Help him up," she commanded and, much to her unwilling pleasure, found herself obeyed.

Tharn and Bear, who appeared to be somewhat better off than the rest of the troop, seized Arthagar under the arms to hoist him, with many a curse and panting breather, into a sitting position astride the bench. The Lieutenant fought their attemps to unfurl his crooked spine despite himself, his arms stiffened in a cross over his pasty chest, wheezing and coughing so that the cuffs of his shirt were splattered with red like a quail's egg. His eyes pleaded with them for forgiveness – or perhaps was it mercy? – so that Mehreen's welled up with a terrible doubt: that of inflicting an unnecessary torment upon a helpless, ailing old man, and doing more damage than the White Ague alone.

"Do it," Bear ground out through gritted teeth, digging his calloused fingers into Arthagar's shoulder in his efforts to hold him down. He nodded at her, unfocused, as though offering that same absolution to his own uneasy conscience. "We can't hold on for much longer. Do it now, else you're to fight this on your own."

Careful not to scald herself, Mehreen hurried to ladle the boiling contents of the cauldron into an old pot of cast iron – another lucky discovery – before bringing said pot over to the bench, her muscles straining and burning under its weight. The clean pungency of thyme rose from the simmering surface, along with the crispness of mint, curling into delicate volutes that rose to coat Mehreen's cheeks with a cloying vapor.

Afflictions of the chest must've been a common enough occurrence in Rohan, for Grandma Guthrid had much to say on the matter; Mehreen imagined her to be not unlike Lalla Nafiyah, with a keen eye and a gnarly voice, filled with knots of sternness and lumps of gruff, unexpected tenderness, and a stash of teeth-trapping sweets within the folds of brightly embroidered skirts. Yet, with the dawn still far away, Mehreen had had little hope of finding anything to fight the plague with…until she'd remembered Buttercup's stash of cooking herbs.

"Here," she murmured in apology as the pot landed on the bench with a heavy 'clonk', escaping her weakened fingers to slosh its contents dangerously close to Arthagar's thighs. "Close your eyes, and try to breathe it in."

She tossed the stinking cloak over his stooped form, uncertain as to whether he'd heard her at all. As on cue, Arthagar hissed, wriggling under the brown wool like a cat in a sack, fighting against his comrades with renewed vigor as his breath came out wet and whistling, reverberating against clouds steam. Just as Mehreen feared he would tip the pot over, and add a burn to the tally of his sufferings, he wheezed in the first uninterrupted, if shaky, inhale since sundown. Beneath the folds of Bear's cloak, his legs unclenched around the wooden bench, his toes uncurling in his boots.

"Breathe," Mehreen urged him as she wiped the sweat off her forehead with her sleeve, wavering in the heat that sifted through the fabric. For an instant, it seemed that the drenched wool had settled over her mouth, catching all the air….

An agonized rale crept along the flooring, akin to a chilly draft. Mehreen tugged at the lacings of her bodice, robbed of a moment to savor her victory. "How is she?"

Buttercup blinked at her words, bringing his glassy gaze to find her eyes through noticeable effort, before it fell to the Captain's waxen face. He frowned in confusion, and Mehreen realized that, for all his doggedness, he'd all but forgotten about the sickness.

"Her compress needs changing," she pushed out, "but at least she's resting. That's a good sign, I think." She tried to sound reassuring.

In Harad, it wasn't a common occurrence, for a man to take care of a woman in ways other than providing to the comforts of her body. To wipe her sweaty brow, or hover over her lips, listening for a sign of life rather than hoping to steal a kiss. A good, thoughtful man would buy enough slaves to do it for him. Lord Elladan's calling Mehreen could find excuses for, beyond his…him-ness, within his elven blood. Elves had more often than held a special place in Lalla Ishtar's stories – a terrible, fascinating, place – and their odd ways must be accepted, together with the pointy ears and the uncanny light-footedness. But, coming from the men of the North, whom Mehreen had ofttimes heard described as barbarians of the basest nature, such a devotion was surprising to say the least.

While she still stood on her own two feet, the Captain had commanded their obedience through what Mehreen had thought to be status alone. Now that she lay unconscious, her pallid skin veined with a blood so dark it looked like marble, unable to raise a finger – let alone her sword arm – they ought've sought a stronger leader, as true men should.

Or, at the very least, true men according to Mehreen's former vision of what that entailed.

As a woman, it didn't belong to her to decide whether such loyalty was foolish or, on the contrary, admirable. But there now was the insidious certainty a true man wouldn't have discarded a wife for having lost her beauty – as her father had her mother – so Mehreen strived not to let them down.

"Here. Drink." She handed Buttercup a goblet of chipped wood filled with the same infusion of mint and thyme. "It should help relieve the fever some."

If there was something Mehreen was accustomed to, it was using water sparingly. Though her father's palace boasted it in quantities bordering on obscene, squandering the treasured resource in bubbling fountains that had long since drawn an eye, and delicate blooms that absorbed a man's worth of it every day, inside the harem, Lalla Nafiyah's good sense had prevailed. In the summer months, water that hadn't been drunk was used to wash one's hands and face; it was then collected to soak their soiled clothing, before ending up under servants' bare knees as they scrubbed the hallways clean in the early mornings, running down the fissures in brown rivulets to, no doubt, end up watering some withered shrub beyond the palace walls.

Now, with the keen understanding not a sip was to be wasted before sunrise, Mehreen saved every single droplet of the bucket's contents. What hadn't been brewed into a distant semblance of tea she'd used to soak a sliver of an old shift with. And, while the Captain's teeth remained clenched, blue lips parched around an involuntary rictus, Mehreen contemplated enlisting one of the men to force them open, so as to pour some of the mixture down her throat.

"Would it work?" Buttercup asked over the rim of his cup after she'd shared the idea with him, the rasp in her voice reminding Mehreen of desert thorn boughs scratching against a wall.

"I don't know," she admitted before wringing out the compress and laying it onto the Captain's heated brow.

"Why not just let her sleep?"

However blurred the lines between men and women's lives may be, here in the North, there still was something lurid about touching a helpless woman, something that made Buttercup balk despite the direness of their situation.

Mehreen contemplated the question, all the while handing out cups of herb-infused water to Bear and Tharn.

The warmth that radiated from the Captain's skin was scorching, unhealthy, the veins beating beneath her temples like living things worming their way out. Yet, she remained utterly still, and only the shallow rising and falling of her breasts under a shirt of damp linen reassured Mehreen she hadn't yet passed. Briefly, she wondered whether this was how Lalla Sahar had gone, or whether her ending had been as tormented as the Sha'ir, Inwion, now was. His eyes rolled wildly behind purplish eyelids as he thrashed in his nightmare, moaning raggedly in between hissing intakes of air.

"We shall…for now," Mehreen decided, if only out of fear of doing more harm than good. Running her fingers along the bottom of the bucket, where a trickle of water still lingered, she proceeded to dampen the Captain's lips with her fingertips.

Another anguished moan; Inwion woke with a jolt, startling Bara who'd been dozing off beside him, unbothered by the noise. Thus called to his side, Mehreen hastened to grab Buttercup's empty goblet from his hands, and fill it anew.

"Drink this," she urged the young ranger, kneeling on rough stone so as to better lower the cup to his cyanosed lips.

He fought her, then, his stare unseeing – or, perhaps, was he seeing a distorted, gruesome version of her, making her dark skin into that of some enemy, on a distant battlefield. "No," he whimpered, "please, don't…."

"In'", Bara murmured as he lay a soothing hand on his companion's shoulder.

"Please…no! I won't tell anyone…."

Mehreen and Bara exchanged a look of dismay. "Long story," Bara whispered at last, "and not mine to tell."

"Please, don't. I…I'll be good, I promise…." Inwion's slurred voice broke as he shrank back against the wall, his skull colliding against stone with a worrisome thud. With his tousled hair and his wide blue eyes, he appeared younger than his years; a mere boy, lost and frightened.

"In', it's me." Bara glanced at the goblet Mehreen was cradling against her chest. "Is that medicine?"

"It's only tea." And a weak one, at that; a remedy of the same ilk as Buttercup's infamous soup. "You should have it," Mehreen offered, "since he's…he's…." Her eyes prickled with exhaustion, a crushing helplessness pressing against her ribs. She felt small, inside this useless immensity of a kitchens; small and insignificant, her evening hopes long forgotten and the dawn still impossibly far away.

"Hey." Bara touched her arm lightly, a ghost of his trademark smirk upon his desiccated lips. "You've done far better than I expected."

Mehreen sniffled. "You expected nothing."

"There's always room for disappointment…and you didn't. Disappoint, I mean. After all, you could've taken a horse and bolted, leaving us to our fate. No," Bara protested with unexpected vehemence as she made another half-hearted attempt to hand him the brew, loath to tell him the thought had, in fact, crossed her mind at some point. "Give it to him."

Mehreen slanted a wary look towards the desperate look on Inwion's face, akin to a cornered squirrel. "How?"

Bara pushed himself upright with a grunt, untangling himself from the blankets of his bedroll and engulfing Mehreen in a wave of acrid sourness such that her breath caught in her throat. From up close, his face was ashen, paler even than Elladan's ethereal wanness, so that his feverish pupils blazed at her from the depths of dark, sunken-in rings eating at his face. As Bara froze mid-movement, curling up on himself to draw a long, avid breath, Mehreen feared he'd faint by the way his eyes rolled back, but he shook himself, and clawed his way back up with renewed determination.

"I'll hold him," he wheezed, "long enough for you to administer this potion of yours. I hope," he added under his breath.

Even the Captain stirred at the howl Inwion let out as Bara clasped his fingers around his jaw, his other hand squeezing the Sha'ir's nose shut. Inwion twisted and buckled, gasping, his freckled face turning a shade of puce such that Mehreen swallowed, ready to retreat.

"Now!" Bara panted, his face flecked with the pearly saliva foaming at Inwion's lips.

Holding her breath, Mehreen reached out, and toppled the now-tepid mixture into the young ranger's mouth. His teeth rattled as Bara forced his jaw shut; he arced, gurgling, until the tea sloshed its way down his throat. Bara sagged limply atop his bedroll.

"You should have some as well," Mehreen persisted.

But, as she peered into the cauldron, her own mouth itching at the prospect of a gulp, she found it to be empty, a few crushed mint leaves sticking to the scraped metal.

Bara watched her from under drooping eyelids, licking the blood off his cracked lips. "It's alright," he said softly as he eased himself into a fetal position, shivering. "Later it is. I'll have some when you do."

Only when he'd drifted off did Mehreen allow her hands to tremble, grasping the ladle against her chest as a thirst unlike anything she'd ever known threatened to overwhelm her. Her eyes smarted, too dry to spare a single tear. Yet, as the first, bashful rays of a new dawn poured through the arrow slits, and a newfound quietude descended over the hall, she understood that at the very least, her efforts hadn't been in vain.

oOoOoOo

The sun blinded her as soon as she set foot beyond the threshold, abandoning the mildness of a twilight for a forceful, trenchant brightness. It'd risen over the fortress walls, sifting through the jaggy crenellations, glancing off the sandy stones of the keep that sat squatly across its ruined twin, strutting like a hen over its egg. A flock of gulls swooped overhead, calling shrilly to one another, their cries echoing inside the bailey and, for an instant, Mehreen was reminded of her last morning in Jufayrah. She'd watched them glide towards their destination on the wings of an iodized wind from the palace roof, wrapped in Hanaa's shawl and her familiar scent, wondering where her own journey would take her.

That morning now seemed like a lifetime ago.

Shading her eyes with one hand, the bucket pulling at her other arm, Mehreen squinted her gritty eyes at the bailey lay below: a square patch of packed earth surrounded by a shingled pentice, with tufts of green piercing painstakingly through and huddling around the stone casing of a well. Over the ridge of its pitched cover, the shuttered windows of the keep seemed to slumber still, much like the birds resting on the lowered portcullis, or the horses in the stables below the keep.

Yet another set of souls relying on her for survival.

Mehreen made her way down the flight of stairs in a staggering pace, the empty bucket hitting her calves with every step and throwing her off-balance. Dimly, she regretted having left her daira back in Bar-Lasbelin…but, as Lalla Nafiyah used to say, if wishes were camels, beggars would ride.

The windlass crank was cool under her touch. Mehreen fought the urge to press her forehead against the metal and close her eyes, reminding herself of those she'd left behind and who, at that very instant, awaited her speedy return. There was tea to be made and compresses to be changed, none of which could happen if she didn't manage to wring a bucketful of water from the well whose cover now towered above her, casting a shadow so welcome Mehreen thought she could live under it.

With every strained turn of the handle, her forearms and shoulders ignited with a diffuse, burning ache that radiated along her ribs and seemed to reach into her very core. The wheel screamed and groaned as the filled bucket rose towards the opening, lending a voice to her plight while Mehreen clenched her teeth, her lips pressed together to keep herself from moaning out. The crank ground against her skin, slick with sweat, eliciting fiery stabs where it tore wetly into her palms.

Yet another regret – that of not having thought to pack a pot of Elladan's salve into her bundle.

Elladan.

At the very least, the pain of her body took Mehreen's mind off the memory of eyes the color of a dove's wing, and thick, black lashes parted on a tiny scar in a display of frailty both understated and mesmerizing; a chink in his armor Mehreen yearned to rush into, until she filled his heart with her tenderness, forcing out the poison of doubt. To link her fingers with his and bring them to her lips, before resting them at the hollow in her throat, where her pulse would speak more eloquently than Mehreen ever could.

The winch groaned anew, muffled against the deafening thumping of her heart against her eardrums. The wheel whistled, resisted…only it wasn't the wheel. It was Mehreen's own, labored breathing, her arms growing leaden and her hands weak on the crank, as spots of color danced before her eyes.

How long had it been since she'd eaten?

Mehreen grappled for the handle, fragments of duty and reproach crowding her mind, but the clammy rod evaded her grip, just like the count of hours – or days – since her last meal. Something pressed against her sternum; something heavy, as though someone'd sat upon her chest and now refused to budge. Mehreen bent over, gasping for breath, yanking at the ties of her bodice digging into her stomach.

Air, she needed air!

Despite the heat, Mehreen was shaking. The bailey was reeling, her widened eyes stinging with the sweat that poured down her forehead and nose, drenching her shift with a slimy coldness. Her ears filled with a terrible tearing sound with each desperate inhale that she tried to swallow.

Air!

A black veil descended upon her and, as Mehreen crumpled, her fingers tangled in the lacings at her chest, she wondered whom it was she should be mourning.

oOoOoOo

She was warm. Her body was limp, soft, as though made of feathers. Mehreen almost giggled at the thought: feathers for fingers, tickling her face; feathers for toes, and feathery ears, rustling with her every breath.

She was warm…too warm. The sensation swelled, until Mehreen perceived a hardness beneath her bones that had little in common with her fluffy dreams, and a merciless heat pounding upon her left cheek. Her skin felt tight, as though stretched beyond its ability, and smarted under the heat.

The sun.

Mehreen let out a feeble groan as she cracked an eye open. Pain flooded her, as though she'd let it in by that one movement. A blinding light, searing her retina. A throbbing ache along her right side and under her skull and, worst of all, beneath her ribs, oppressing her lungs. Mehreen inhaled and gasped at once, hungrily sucking in a gulp of hot air in measly streams. Once the dizziness had subsided enough for her to move, she fumbled for a grip and, finding one on the asperities of the well, slowly pulled herself upright.

Oh, how it hurt! The pain was everywhere: in her stiff, bleeding hands, in every muscle fiber, and under every inch of skin, from her scraped knees to her tongue, where she'd bit it. Remembering her fall, Mehreen touched her fingertips to the right side of her face, relieved when they came out unmarred.

How long had she lain here, unconscious?

She searched an answer in the shadows, and the way they'd moved along the ward, growing ever shorter, hunkering down as though preparing to pounce. Judging from the narrow crescent cast by the casing onto the dusty, plantain-riddled ground, it must've been close to midday. A panic engulfed her, then, at the thought of how her absence could've been misinterpreted.

You could've taken a horse, and bolted.

Mehreen had to tell Bara she hadn't abandoned them, because if he – if they all – lost hope, then…then….

She knelt, biting back a cry of pain as invisible gravel dug into her tender skin. Resting a trembling hand on the stone rim of the well, Mehreen pushed herself to her feet and stood, swaying, dismayed by the endless distance that separated her from the door of the keep. Her breath sizzled in her ears, loud and foreign, as though belonging to someone else. Someone much bigger, with bellows for lungs.

Mehreen took one small, shuffling step. The weight against her chest seemed to lessen if she kept herself bent, like an old woman, though the sensation of breathing through a damp cloth remained.

It was all a game. A simple, harmless game, much like the one she and Hanaa used to play, back in the palace. Grandma's footsteps. How fitting. Mehreen's eyes burned, long since dried-out, at the memory of Hanaa's laughter, her throat aching as it also summoned the joyful babble of the fountains, cold and plentiful. She all but sobbed with longing.

One step at a time.

All Mehreen had to do, was to inch, however slowly, towards her destination. She could no longer carry the bucket, but at least she could tell them she'd tried. She stumbled on the first step of the stairs, crawling her way up on all fours with her eyes closed, mumbling out the words to that childish game like a magic spell. All would be well. If she only made it one stair higher, all would be well.

Another step.

The stone was coarse and warm beneath her fingers. Inviting. All Mehreen had to do was rest her forehead on the next tread, and relax….

No.

She managed not to collapse at the threshold, in the inviting shadows of the corridor that led to the kitchens. Feeling her way down the hallway, Mehreen strained her ears, listening for words of disappointment or, on the contrary, shouts of relief at her return. The fire must've died out; no orange glow licked at the somber stone, beyond the opening that led to the kitchens, but still Mehreen drudged on. Her mouth watered at the thought of licking what remained of the tea at the bottom of the now-cooled cauldron. Until she found her strength again, perhaps could they resort to the method the desert dwellers used: gathering dew at dawn, on the surface of carefully laid-out bowls and stretched-out tarps.

All of a sudden, Mehreen felt very proud of herself for thinking of that.

"Bara," she whispered, shuffling over to his curled-up form, endearingly young and slight under the folds of his cloak, and reached to shake him by the shoulder. "Bara, I'm back. I think I know how to…."

She pulled her hand away, burned by the cold that'd seeped into her skin through the layers of fabric. A vile, unearthly thing, at odds with everything a living, breathing man should be.

"Bara?" Mehreen bleated out, her chapped lips splitting open with a twinge.

Bara's face thumped softly against the stone floor as his whole body sagged, disturbed in that mineral immobility which had no right to exist amongst the living. Without thinking, Mehreen cupped his rubbery, impossibly heavy head, turning it towards the light. It wouldn't do, to let him lie so uncomfortably, was all she could think of, unable to let go nor move away.

Inwion stirred beside her, mumbling, and blindly searched out Bara's touch. "Wake up, sleepyhead," he muttered before drawing back with a hiss, fully awake, blinking away the odious sensation of death beneath his fingertips.

With her hands trapped beneath Bara's cheek, Mehreen shook, thankful for the dark strands of hair that'd fallen to obscure his unseeing eyes. It was he who had bolted, leaving them all behind. Abandoning her. Inwion's cry of alarm faded into a crushing silence, one that robbed Mehreen of everything but the slowing rhythm of her own heartbeat. Breathing was hard…too hard. And she was so tired of trying….

A chilling weightlessness overcame her, drawing her into a dark embrace. When her body slumped to the floor, Mehreen was no longer present to feel it.