Shadow's eave - Merren's tale

[the-small-print]

Part 1

Note: I've already posted part 1 on The Road Goes Ever On thread, but this thread is specifically for this character's story, and any feedback would be appreciated... ;)



Rain clattered down through the leaves in great, heavy drops and spattered onto the tired shingle roof, already sodden with years of weather and moss. Merren squinted up at it in consternation as he hobbled up the path, which was quickly becoming a muddy torrent. The bundle of haphazard sticks and split logs jangled dully and thumped against the heavy plank door as he stepped inside and kicked his feet against the rushes laid down by the doorway.

The sweet, earthy smell of vegetable broth hung heavily in the warm, muggy air and he smacked his lips appreciatively together, dropping his bundle next to the fire-pit in a jumble, and wiping his nose on the sleeve of his tunic.

The fading leaden twilight from outside was shunted away as the door closed, and with a clucking noise like an irritated hen, Mara set about sorting the mess of firewood into neat piles.

"I've told you more'n once, husband. It's not safe to be out at even'; shadows aren't as empty as they ought these days. You dry off that axe afore it goes rusted, and yourself afore you catch your death o' cold,” she said, finishing with a severe look.

Merren grinned at her toothily and scratched the greying hairs on his chin, then reached down and picked up the muddy-handled axe from the rushes.

"What's for supping, love? Broth? Ar, I could do with some and all...."

He took off his sodden tunic and used it to wipe the mud from the axe blade, steam rising gently from his wiry back. The pot clanked as Mara's ladle briskly stirred the contents, and the orange embers of the fire hushed and whispered softly, casting a soft red glow about the old woman's set features.

Merren chewed his lip ponderously and examined her face with the eyes of memory. She had never been beautiful in the way of elves or the lasses of the plains, but there was still a care and determination about her, a solid decency and a good head on her shoulders, and out here that was worth so much more...

A pity now, to see how fragile she seemed - it was death for a mother to lose her children, and only testament to her strength that she was still going. Gods knew it had been hard, so very hard. But they were still here and they were still alive and warm together, and by Merren's reckoning, that was something to be proud of.

Mara's sharp eyes caught his, and something of his thoughts must have been showing on his face, for she paused, and then gave him a brief, stolid smile before handing him a steaming bowl of broth and some bread, crumbling a few lumps of goat's cheese on top.

They ate in silence and then simply sat, watching one another as the firelight faded to the faintest trace of a muddy brown glow; the drumming of the rain outside became a faint patter, and then stopped.

Finally, with a heavy sigh, they moved over to the bed and clambered inside, and within five hundred heartbeats, Mara's breath had become a rumbling snore.

Visions drifted across Merren's eyes bizarrely; glimpses of sunlight from a past age, shreds of forgotten laughter echoed brightly up from the depths of his memory - the raised voices of two boys, tussling in the trees at the edge of the clearing, laughing and shouting, their feet thudding on the ground and the old forest creaking in the breeze -

With a wash of cold panic across his chest and a little jerk, Merren was awake, blinking his eyes furiously to clear the gum of sleep from them. The creak had been real. A thread of impossibly bright silver moonlight cut the darkness by his bedside, and there was the faintest of splashes by the door.

His heart hammering dangerously, Merren lay stiff as a rod, waiting for another sound to tell him where the intruder was.

There - the slide of one wooden bowl against another, in the far corner.

As quickly as he could, Merren leapt from the bed, aiming for where he had left the axe by his bundled tunic, but the bedskins came off with him and his feet tangled, throwing him to the ground. There was a clatter and a shriek from behind him as Mara sat bolt upright in bed, clutching her chest.

His veins burning with urgency, Merren writhed and struggled to loose himself from the skins, and was free. Ignoring the ominous crack from his protesting hip, he darted for the axe and after a moment's fumbling it was in his hand, trailing a tunic over its head. He turned into the blind darkness and yanked the tunic away, bearing the blunted old blade, and staring about into the shadows to find the intruder's shape.

There was a crash as a basket was kicked over and a sack dropped to the ground. Its contents tumbled out, and there it was, a black, gangly shape; a darker blur in the sharp shadows cast by the moon. With a yell, Merren swung his axe directly at it, but it jerked sharply aside and the blade turned, striking with a hollow 'thump' and glancing out of his hand. There was a grunt of expelled breath and the thing rammed into him and knocked him over backwards, but with less force than he had been expecting.

Mara gave another shriek and a candle-stand flew through the air and bounced off the doorstep where moments later, the swarthy figure stood silhouetted against the moonlight, slumping slightly against the doorframe and panting.

Scrabbling around behind his back, Merren found a thick stick of firewood and closed his hand about it. With a jerk and an inarticulate yell he leapt toward the figure and swung the wood. It lunged away from him out towards the clearing, but the branch connected with its shoulder and the thing sprawled forwards into the mud of the path, tried feebly to pull itself up and collapsed again. Its long, straggly black hair trailed in the dirt.

His eyes wide and jowls shaking, Merren raised his arm to strike again, but a hand caught his wrist and Mara's voice hissed "Merren, no!"

He glanced from her to the figure on the ground, his mouth flapping in bewilderment whilst his stunned mind raced to catch up.

And then it came to him; a slow wave of realisation. The weakly struggling form was not a goblin; it was human. As the moonlight caught her, he would make out a tallish, dark-haired girl, her body thin with hunger and her limbs shaking weakly as she tried again to get up. He dumbly lowered the stick and let it fall.

"Gods."

Mara had rushed forwards, her night-dress trailing in the mud as she stooped to turn the girl over and look at her face. Merren padded forward in a daze, stopping on the other side of her.

The moonlight caught the girl's pale, muddied face and he could see her madly rolling, unfocused eyes and sweat-beaded forehead. She blinked fiercely and tried to get up, her head lolling slightly, but she slipped again and fell back to earth.

"Adhnizish adhûn! Azlat! Azlat! Get - get off me!”

Mara recoiled as if she had been burnt, and a shadow passed over her face. Something about the ugly syllables the girl had just uttered seemed to chill the air and make the shadows deeper. She backed away, and the girl struggled feebly to stand, though her limbs were shaking and there was blood on her lip. Quivering, she staggered backwards a step, blinking at the old couple as if trying to find clear sight and failing. A drunken hand fumbled at her belt and drew a knife. Its blade bobbed and weaved like a silvery fish in the darkness as she struggled to hold it steady, and then...

She collapsed. Her limbs gave way and she fell in a crumpled heap upon the path before slumping onto her side, unconscious.

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"Gods...," breathed Mara.

There was a long moment of tentative indecision as their breath slowed and the chill in the air subsided. Finally, Mara's features set.

"Come, there's some sickness upon her, or some blight o' hunger. Help get the poor wretch inside."

They shared a glance, each thinking with the other, but neither speaking their mind.

Between them they picked up the limp form and carried her inside onto the table, scattering wrapped cheeses and oatbreads onto the floor. Her skin under Merren's fingers burned to the touch. As Mara set about lighting candles from the fire's embers and wiping the mud from the girl's brow, it became obvious that a terrible fever had gripped her, and it did not take long to find the source of it.

A soiled bandage was wrapped about her left forearm, and underneath was a dreadful wound; a palm's breadth of skin had been crudely cut away, and what was underneath was inflamed and jagged, and sent a foul smell into the air.

"Ye Gods," Merren muttered under his breath. "How w's she still standing wi' a wound like to that? Must be a poison an' fury in her blood by the look of things. She's needing a healer, or a rite-sayer if uncommon luck isn't wi' her."

Mara was frowning at the wound, and holding the girl's wrist with an unconscious tenderness that Merren had not seen from her in many years.

"Can't find a healer, 'less we were to wander north and yell for an elf, but there's no likeness they'd come for us, even if'n we find them, much less for one who speaks her tongue," she finished darkly.

They both stared at the girl's face. The shadow of death lay over her and hollowed her eyes, yet there was still a cold, high beauty about her - pale, shapely features turned in troubled sleep and shaded by the want of nourishment and care. Her breath was heavy and there was blood upon her lip; Merren supposed that his axe must have hit her chest and gave silent thanks to whichever spirits were listening that his neglect of the blade and his panic had let the blow fall so lightly. Nevertheless, a wash of hot guilt crept up his back and spread to his brow.

Whichever way he turned it, and whichever black tongue she spoke, here was a child, or little more, hurt and hungry. As such there was only one choice.

"Aye, no elves. Journeying that path these days i'nt a good notion if you're wanting to come back upon it, elves or no." He chewed his lip for a moment. "We'll see what we kin do for her 'ere. If'n she dies, so be the will o' the gods, if not, then we kin see if her heart's as black as her tongue."

Mara's knuckles were white. There was a yawning finality in the air, and Merren knew that their chances of living beyond this were slim. To see another child fade from sickness would cast a pall over both of them that would not be easy to survive, and if she were nursed back to health? Well, they were both old, and even in the grip of fever, the girl had moved like a snake. What were the chances that anyone who spoke a tongue so foul would have a good heart?

No matter. Fate was not to be played with or ignored, and better to be murdered in their beds and know her heart was black than to let her die and never be sure.

__________________________________


The visions washing across her mind became calmer; throat-rending screams, crushing futility and the terror of pursuit gave way to the quiet moments; when she had simply sat and listened to the boom and wash of the tide, watched lizards skitter over the dunes, bathed her feet in that sparkling woodland stream, or lay back and watched the clouds. The hiss of a sick mind grew less in her ears.

Coolness washed over her face and there was a great weight lifted from her, and for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, she felt she was close to surfacing and coming fully awake. But her body was still weak.

Her eyelids fluttered as she tried to push them apart, and she gave a deep sigh. Faceless, timeless dreams faded, and lucidity returned in little washes of sensation - the smell of leafmould and wet wood, birds twittered, her left arm tingled and stung fiercely but it no longer held that ache that made the back of her throat tight and her stomach churn. There was a red glow of sunlight pressing through her eyelids, and she tried again to open them.

It was difficult. The flare of sun seemed to needle into her painfully and she could not focus. She gave up and closed her eyes. It was still too bright, so she turned her head to the right into the shade and became aware of another acute pain. The memory of a heavy stick catching the crook between her neck and her shoulder set her wondering.... what had happened?

Someone had hit her.... a man, and it had been dark, everything blurred. Then what?

Nearby there was the flap of canvas in the wind and something creaked overhead.

A mast! A ship! No! They'd caught her!

A surge of deepest terror and panic jetted through her veins and she jerked wildly, trying to regain control of her body all at once. She tumbled from a high table and it turned over, her left arm flailed to break her fall and knocked a stack of wooden plates and bowls tumbling to the floor so they came clattering down on top of her along with a tangled mess of skins and padding from the table. She struggled to get up, finding new and agonising pains in every part of her body, but particularly in her arm, and her chest felt as though a hammer had struck it. The world swayed and she tried to hold her balance, grabbing out for a wall or a table until she became used to the roll of the waves....

It took a moment for her to realise that there were no waves, and that the sway and swell were of her own imbalance. There was no salt-water smell and the birds she could hear were not gulls. So where was she?

She hung onto the upright beam of a corner and willed her eyes to focus, blinking fiercely and listening to the blood rush past her ears. She stood there for a long moment until the thumping of her heart in her bruised chest subsided a little, and the nausea stopped pressing at her throat, then raised an arm to wipe her eyes and take better stock of her surroundings.

She was in a largish room; a peasant’s hovel made from logs cut and stacked atop one another to make rude but effective walls. Herbs hung drying from the rafters above and an ashen fire pit smoked idly a spear’s length from the plank door. The door was open.

She gathered herself and pushed away from the pillar she had been leaning on, staggering toward the light with single-minded determination, willing herself to remain upright and gathering a little strength with each hesitant step. A searing light of bright gold blossomed at her from all directions as she stepped outside, making her stop and blink. She was in a clearing amongst a ring of tall and ancient beech trees, resplendent in the fiery reds and golds of early autumn. Frost lingered under the shadows and the long grass in the open took the sunlight and gathered it in a thousand crystalline drops, hanging pendant from the fading green blades where the day’s warmth had made the hoarfrost liquid.

The girl blinked and looked around blearily, searching for signs of life. The clearing was empty but for a few strutting hens and wood piled in rings, though from maybe two spear-casts deeper into the wood across the clearing came the ‘tock’ and clatter of wood being split on a block. Hearing this, she turned and hobbled away in the opposite direction, making for the nearest cluster of trees. As soon as their shadow enclosed her she felt the cold bite, making her bare legs sting and the sweat-sodden back of her tunic cling to her and sap the heat from her body. Frozen beech-mast stuck into the soles of her feet until they steadily grew numb, and thorny brambles dragged at her shins and caught in her tunic.

Hours passed, and as the shadows grew deeper about her she became more and more afraid. She had set out by instinct; she had stayed alive for the past three years by not allowing herself to doubt or question – she was only safe when she was alone, she had to keep moving, to lay traps down and double back, take the harder path over the obvious one, find food as it came, for ever marked and owned.

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That accursed mark on her forearm, staring up at her! A simple form; a running horse set upon the waves of the sea, encircled by a double line. In the long dark nights it had grown in her mind, made her skin itch with disgust. In her dreams it had screamed out in his voice, shone like a beacon in the darkness, willing her to be found. Then, her hunters would all turn and see her in the dark, and their faces became the faces of the others; grim, accusing, mournful and full of malice. Boys and girls who had all died upon the burning cross because of what she had done, because she had wanted so sorely to be free. Those dreams always ended in such panicked horror that with no-one to talk to and no friendly face to reassure her, their nightmarish promise would spill over into the waking world, until she could feel the brand staring at her even by the light of day, hear her dead master’s voice laughing at her, just beyond the edge of surety. It had become too much, and so she had resigned herself to death, but on her own terms. She had bitten down upon a stick of wood and cut the brand from her arm, then thrown the bloodied, limp scrap of her that belonged to the past deep into a hole in the rocks. And then she ran, and ran and ran until she collapsed, then got up and wandered on in a fevered twilight world until death would catch up with her.

But now that the brand and the fever had gone it was harder to keep her mind free of doubt. For the first time that she could remember, there was hope, and the possibility that she might live to be free and unhunted, and for the first time she realised just how sorely she desired that. The further she trudged on, the more it seemed to her that she was going in the wrong direction. Someone had found her weak and dying, and yet they had not killed her and had not chained her. They had left the door open and tied new bandages on her arm. It made no sense, but she could not find alternative for it; they had wanted her to live, and had saved her from the fever.

With a jolt she stopped, stubbing a numb toe on a gnarled root, and stood hanging with a moment’s tentative indecision. Her certainty that to turn back would be to walk into a trap waned, to be replaced by a pressing need to get away from these oppressive, dark trees. A new threat seemed to loom before her, dark and tangible as a cloying mist, and she turned sharply around and began skittering briskly through the leaves in the direction from which she had come.

The deep quiet of the wood was unnerving, and every rustle and crack made her jump. Her tracks became harder and harder to follow as the darkness closed about her, and the sense of threat behind her mounted more and more until she could almost feel the tingle of breath on the back of her neck.

She felt a panic creeping up on her, a boiling mess of emotion so humbling that she knew she would not be able to repress it and it would make a child of her. A whimper clutched at her throat and she jerkily lengthened her stride, glancing back over her shoulder as her breath quickened uncontrollably and tears began to pri ckle at her eyes, blurring the fading twilight. She stopped with a jolt then, her heart hammering. She had lost her way. A seething wave of panicked rage and shame at her own idiocy crawled over her skin and took hold of her. She cast about wildly around, looking for traces of where she had been, but all was a faded grey blur.

There was a rustle and a sigh close behind, and all sense left her. With a judder of utmost guttural panic she pelted away from the sound, screaming and wailing as if death itself were hounding her heels.







//To be continued...

[the-small-print]

“Merren! Oh Merren, come quick! She’s gone!”

There was no need to ask who had gone. There was only one ‘she’, indeed only one person of either sex who could evoke such worry in Mara’s voice these days; the ragged, dark-haired nameless girl they had found trying to steal food from them two turns of the moon ago.

Gawping for a moment, Merren shouldered his axe and loped after his wife towards their house, his joints creaking like trees in a high wind.

She had not woken in all the time she had lain upon her makeshift bed in their house, only tossed and turned and sweated and lost weight, only sometimes managing to keep down the porridge Mara fed her through her delirium. She had muttered and moaned, sometimes screamed, but never was she in a state of true wakefulness.

It had been bizarre and disturbing to sleep in the room with her there and yet not there. Her voice sometimes sounded in the depths of the night when there was no light at all to stay the horror of it; a harsh, breathy rasp uttering cursed syllables that made Merren’s bones freeze as he heard them:

“Ashi – ashi athad… ned gutlurz…. ned… ned… batuluk”

On those occasions he would look across to Mara and make out only the glint of her eyes, staring straight ahead to the ceiling, clearly, like Merren, wishing that the girl would stop, but fearing what would happen when she did.

It was not always so, though. Sometimes she would simply sound like any other, uttering no noises that made coherent words, but the simple moans of one in the throes of fever, and sometimes… Just for a fleeting moment, her rambling would rise and she would sound like a child, sweet-voiced, uttering tongues Merren did not know, but whose syllables were as light and pleasant as the sway of leaves and the bubble of water over stones in a stream; lyrical and beautiful, and completely at odds with the demonic rasping of the darkest nights. And when this mood took her, her whole body would change, seeming more alive, her furrowed brow would slacken and she would seem to grow younger before his eyes.

Merren had felt this he knew this person, even though he had never looked her in the eyes, but now something of the fear and panic in Mara’s voice found him. It was all well when she was asleep and feverish, but if she was gone, awake, which voice would be hiding behind her eyes? He panted and frowned around at the shadows, half expecting to see the glint of a knife and hear the rasp of that foul tongue.

Mara was standing just inside the doorway to their home, clutching her apron to her mouth and staring across to where the table lay, knocked aside and in disarray. The skins and furs that the girl had slept on for so long lay piled and reeking upon the ground, and she was gone. Merren panted and stared for a long moment, his mind feeling sluggish and with no notion of what, if anything, should be done.

“She’s up,” he said, dumbly.

“Aye, she’s up Merren, and gone, out alone into woods, no one to help her…”

Merren paused for a long moment and swallowed. He rubbed his brow with the back of his arm.

“May be that it’s for the best. We don’t know her nature, nor what she’d do if’n she seen us. She’ll be right, one way or the other….”

“Be right? Be right, you old fool?” Mara fumed, “Isn’t you using your eyes at all? She’s taken no skins and no clothes and no food – it’s all still here. So she’s not thinkin’ straight an’ she’s not prepared, not taken no knife nor no kindling neither, I’ll wager. You know as well as I what lurks out in them trees, so don’t you go giving me ‘She’ll be right’. I’ve not been keeping, feeding and changing her all this time like a baby for her to go out and freeze to death or get herself et, no matter what colour her tongue may be!”

Merren frowned, unhappy at being berated so, but feeling that his wife was speaking aright.

“Aye… aye. Yer words are true, love. Gather me some foods and fetch my cloak, I’ll see what the land can tell me.”

Mara shook her head in exasperation before hurriedly gathering together what he would need, and Merren hobbled outside, his knees still feeling the effort of his earlier run. He squinted down at the grass, and panned about for signs and tracks in it. His vision was not as good as it once had been, but it took him moments to find the bare footprints in the mud by the door, and a darker trail where the grass had been bent over and the dew knocked off by shuffling feet. The path led away to the east, into the deepest of the woods. Merren frowned darkly.
.
Mara bustled out and gave him a hamper to tie to his back containing all that he would need for the search, his axe and his cloak. They shared a brief glance, which carried a dozen unsaid messages, before Mara patted him firmly on the chest and said, “You find her, you hear me?”.

Merren gave her a short nod and turned his back on her, following the darkened stripe of grass into the woods, then picking up the trail in the dragged-aside brambles with broken thorns.

As he walked, Merren could not help but let his mind wander, to dream about where this errand might lead, for better and for worse. He pictured himself as saviour, and as victim; the girl as daughter and as killer. Pictures formed in his head, telling the tales of each future: one where he would find the girl and take her by the hand, leading her back to safety and she would learn his tongue and call him father; and another where the last thing he would feel in this world would be the clammy grip of a hand on his chin and scrape of a blunt knife across his throat as an unseen murderess sprung from the shadows and took him unawares, dedicating his blood to some foul god.

He shivered and chided himself for allowing his mind to fantasise about such things when to do so made it all the less likely he would find her at all.

The trail was becoming harder and harder to follow; The trees began to loom overhead, becoming taller and darker, and more devoid of life. It had been a thousand paces since anything moved – the jewel-blue flash as a jay took off by the path – and on this bare, dry forest floor the marks left by wandering feet were becoming harder and harder to find.

Sometimes, when he was a younger man, Merren would walk into the deep woods by himself, simply to enjoy the feeling of awe that such immensity of life would bring to him. But he had not been this deep in many years; not since he had been narrowly missed by a party of orcs ten years past.

The woods here were so quiet that it felt irreverent to make the slightest noise. It was like standing in the presence of a patient, watching giant who would wait in perfect stillness for a thousand years before shifting his weight or sighing, and only then would you realise that he was there at all. But the silence was ever expectant, and the woods were certainly not dead; better to say that they were alive, but on such a grander scale than the life of a man or a bird or a blade of grass that it was impossible to see from so close. The air seemed thick; the closing darkness seemed to make a grainy smoke in the air that could not be stirred. The occasional chirrup or tweet of a bird settling down to roost seemed far away, way up in the canopy, two dozen heights of men above him, and muffled.

[the-small-print]

A distance away something scuffled in the centuries-dried leaves and was silent.

‘It’s a matter of taming your mind,’ thought Merren as he squinted ahead at the faint traces of footprints ahead of him. ‘Either you can let your mind fall to fear, and every hair on your neck will tingle and the very air will seem tight in your lungs, or you can take the woods for your own, and feel like the trees are your fathers.’

It worked - as such girding words of wisdom are wont to - in his mind, yet even the moment he had finished the thought, a shudder ran down his back and it was achingly difficult not to let his head jerk sharply around and look over his shoulder for chasing shadows. He rubbed his arms for warmth and frowned. A slightly sick feeling was mounting in his throat. It was getting too dark to see, and he knew if he did not turn back right now, then he would become lost and have to wait for the light of day, lest he lose the path.


The silence was so thick now, it felt like he was being stared at intensely by someone just a little too far away to see in the falling darkness.

A yawn of inadequacy struck at his stomach as he imagined telling Mara that the girl had been lost in the woods and would never be found again; imagined her bones lying in a sad little pile at the base of a tree, picked clean by the scuttling things of the wood. He saw her empty eye sockets staring off into the untrodden depths of time, and slowly being covered over by millennia of softly falling leaves until there was nothing left, no trace of her but in the mind of a pair of long-forgotten woodsfolk. He shuddered, and tried hard to keep the *****ling from his eyes.

At that precise moment, he heard a sound that made him jump out of his skin; a scream - so long, drawn out and terrible that it shook him to the core of his being. It came from two thousand paces or so further into the woods, further than he could see, and it echoed long between the trees, making birds burst clattering from their roosts above and furry things scurry away or pelt up the trunks of their trees.

There was such depth of anguish, such sorrow, fear and frustration, and such terrible, crushing, mind-destroying sadness in that cry that Merren choked in fear and sympathy and could not breathe. It was the single most chilling and pitiful sound that he had ever heard.

He gasped and tried to gather his wits as the scream sounded again, shorter and lower, and it began to resolve itself into long, weary sobs that grabbed Merren by the heart and drew him hastily on towards the source of the sound. He stopped twenty paces away, where he could just make out the huddled shape of a girl, curled up on her knees and crying. Her long black hair trailed in the slowly rotting leaves and she shook with cold and grief.

After standing dumbfounded for a long, helpless moment, Merren let out a quiet cough, meaning to announce his presence. The girl’s head jerked up with frightening quickness and for a moment her face took on features of such startled ferocity that Merren jumped back. Her hands scrabbled at her belt, at where her knife would have been had she thought to retrieve it, but when they found nothing, after a momentary look of disbelief, her face folded again into a look of shaky, resigned sadness, and she covered it with a hand, returning to her now silent reverie.

Merren’s jaw flapped as he tried to think what to do. Heat crept up his face as the moments passed and he still could not bring himself to move, and a mounting sense of impotence crept over him. He wanted so badly to help, but he had no idea how. Eventually, after perhaps a hundred heartbeats – it was hard to measure, since his was hammering away so fast – he slowly paced forwards making the sort of soft, cooing noises one might to a nervous horse that could still kick out. To his immense surprise she did not react at all, just sat hunched over, silently shaking and covering her face with both hands, breathing heavily and sniffing.

He tentatively reached out and carefully took her shoulders in his hands, expecting her at any moment to explode upwards and thrash him to death. To his surprise she did not; she simply shuddered a little when he touched her. It was surprising just how small she seemed close to, when on the night she had first raided the house she had seemed taller than he in his advanced age. Her shoulders were soft and warm to the touch, made of the same stuff as any youth’s. He inwardly laughed in relief and self-mockery, realising that he had been half-expecting them to be made of marble, or some hard, demonic scale.

Continuing his run of meaningless soothing syllables he gently lifted her to her feet and began to lead her back towards the point where he had left her tracks
to come and find her. She was not crying now, but staring down at her feet mutely, her eyes glassy, apparently all too happy to be led and comforted by another. Merren guessed that this had not happened to her in a very, very long time.

The darkness closed about them and Merren began to settle down into the pace of walking, ever aware of this delicate new charge he was bringing with him. It was astounding how different she seemed now that she was awake, and Merren startled himself by realising that though he had seen and felt he had known her for two turnings of the moon, he must seem a stranger to her.

After a few thousand paces the girl stopped, taking him somewhat by surprise and bringing him up short in his musings. She hugged her arms and shrugged off his hands, then simply stood watching him expectantly. Merren was quite nonplussed by this sudden change of mood, and felt again like a fish out of water, unsure of what to do. He moved a little forward along the path and made encouraging gestures to her, but she did not react. She only rubbed her arms and shivered a little. Merren stopped and pulled his well-made but well-worn black cloak off over his head and held it out to her. She made no move to take it.

“Are you cold?” he offered, longing to go back to the simplicity of just leading her along. “Come, take it… no? You looks cold to me.”

Merren frowned, unsure whether she understood a word he was saying.

The girl looked at him with the air of a sulky toddler, though it was clear that this demeanour was simply a temporary indulgence and she would regain a more wary stance soon. She pursed her lips for a moment, as if trying to remember the shape of a word.

“Where – where you take?” she asked slowly. Her accent was not one Merren had heard before, and was utterly unplaceable. Any folk who spoke Westron might have had a dialect like it, and perhaps it was only her clumsy use of the words that made it sound odd at all.

Merren hesitated, realising how nervous he was. He briefly scolded himself, feeling he should be showing a little more resilience and resolve. Some small part of him also longed to appear strong and sure in order to impress, though he did not admit it to himself.

“I – back to the house. Where you run off from ‘s mornin’,” He said, beginning already to sound more gruff and manly. “Come on now,” he added shortly, tossing the cloak meaningfully towards her before turning and striding back along his way.

The girl scowled at his back. It was an odd sensation she was feeling, and she couldn’t immediately identify it. She shivered, then reluctantly bent to pick up the cloak, and followed.

And as the crunch and skitter of their feet faded into the falling darkness, not every shadow remained still.

[SNarfel]

A good back story; especially satisfying if you know who its about and have had dealings with the character :).

[the-small-print]

The milky white sky turned steadily grey, then sunk through a murky blue to black, and not once did the rain slow its hammering pace. The rivers ran brown and burst their banks; the mossy rocks seemed to swell with this unexpected glut of precipitation, and the trees dripped great spattering drops down onto the dark, hunched figure who had been sitting below them since mid-day.

Fear - it was always there, boiling just below the surface of her skin and threatening to burst out, but tonight she was having such trouble controlling it that she could barely think. There were a dozen choices open to her, so it was as much to her own surprise as it might have been to anyone else’s that she chose to take the most reckless path. She felt exposed as she stood and began walking down the middle of this mud-sink of a road, and the fear it stirred in her churned over and over in her stomach, and bringing a sting of nausea to the back of her throat.

Every bone in her body screamed at her to turn around and hide as she approached the gate, splashing through the deep, cold, muddy puddles that wallowed in the wheel-ruts of a hundred carts. She was quivering by the time she reached the great oaken thing, her hands making involuntary jerks at her sides, but it was as though she were being led by a puppeteer, for she did not hesitate to raise her fist and hammer upon the gate for attention. This was the first time she had actively sought to be seen in nearly a year, and it took a great effort of will not to leap back as the eye-door swung open and a stubbly, disinterested face appeared at the grate and peered through at her.

“Oh aye, what might you be wanting, miss? ‘re you lost?”

She had to think for a moment to translate his words in her mind, and then for another to find her response. What did she want? This was stupid.

“Let me in.”

The guard frowned at her. She shivered and shook with such a mess of frantic urges that she did not know what to do with herself, and it was all she could do to remain standing on the spot.

The guard watched as she glanced over her shoulder fretfully.

“It’s my job to ask yer business, Miss. If you can’t furnish me with an answer I can’t let you in.”

Her agitation mounted, and she hit the gate with her hand, without any real reason. Reason.

“Let me in! I want – wanting – stay in inn. Let me in!”

“Easy now, young ’un! All right, all right, I’ll let you in. Hold a moment…”

The guard reached for the bolt. He was utterly nonplussed and had no idea what to make of the strange young woman outside his gate. She was tallish and dark-haired, dressed all in tattered black cloth and an ill-fitting leather jerkin; pretty, but with the look of one of the rangers who stalked the hills about. That would explain her strangeness, if not her odd use of the tongue, but perhaps some of the Rangers came from further south. It was not worth his while to interfere with their affairs and he supposed it would be easier to let this stranger in than to try to keep her out. After all, what harm could she do? Clearly soaked through and shivering with cold, and something else. He slid back the bolt and opened the gate, and no sooner had he done so than the girl darted through under his arm and strode quickly down the street away from him, not even glancing back.

The feeling of sickness rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard. Feather-like quivers ran up and down her spine and her head pounded. There was such a strong feeling inside her that she was about to die that she was delirious with fear. And yet this feeling had been with her for days, ever since she had seen them watching her in the wilds.

She could not suppress a whimper of panic as she thought of it; there was no way, surely no way in the world that they could have followed her here, so far away. It was nearly three years - three years since she had seen the last of them, around a hidden campfire in that green land in the shadow of the cursed mountains. But as surely as the sun rose each morning, she had seen them in the hills near this rainy little village, so far from anywhere she knew that it might be on the edge of the world.

Three times - hooded and cloaked figures, watching her. Close enough to see the grey of their eyes and their pale skin. Each time a different one, and each time she had not seen them until it was nearly too late to run. But they never chased. They were playing with her… the wilds were not safe.

There were people everywhere here, between the mud-splattered white-daub and timber houses, riding carts through, their horses steaming and snorting in the wet, cold night. It felt so unnatural to walk between them, in plain sight; so wrong that the sickness of it nearly caught her. But that would only draw attention, and she needed to fit in. Travellers – they stayed in inns. She knew that. She had some gold and there must be an inn here somewhere, for all these merchants to stop in. Somewhere obvious or it would have no trade - there!

It had a board hanging from above the door with a white shape painted upon it, but it was too dark to make out its form. There was no carved stone here, no whores plying their trade and no black-skinned warriors guarding the door, but it had the feel of an inn all the same. She splashed up to the entranceway and tried to ignore the hissing in her mind as she stopped at the door to control her breathing.

Something touched her arm and she sprang sideways, her face aghast and her heart leaping out of her chest in shock, spinning in midair to face whatever it was.

“Beg pardon miss, I only meant to get past,”

A shocked-looking peasant stared at her for a moment, then tugged his forelock to her and pushed open the door to the inn, muttering “Evenin’”.

Her breath returned, in great, punctuated gasps as she sought frantically to calm herself. She would have to go inside. Against all her instincts, it would be safer to sleep somewhere there were other people. She steeled herself and pushed open the door.

A warm mug of air caught her as she walked in, kicking her feet on the rushes and trying to look inconspicuous. The soft, yellow light of two-dozen oil lanterns lit the place, and there was a fire burning merrily in the hearth. The air was alive with loud chatter and laughter, and the strains of a pair of fiddlers playing a lively tune. Glancing in the fiddlers’ direction, her mouth dropped open in wonder and horror. There were four of the shortest men she had ever seen; two playing whilst the others clanked their tankards and sang along. They did not look like cripples though – all of their arms and legs were straight, just hideously short, like pudgy children. Their deformities did not seem to be drawing attention, though. Perhaps they were well known in the village and - more surprisingly - tolerated; even allowed to buy ale.

She shook her head to clear it. This did not concern her. She needed the Inn-Master so she could take a room for herself. She made for the bar, where the portly Master was gabbing with some customers, but then she stopped dead in her tracks. By the bar were sitting two of the men she had seen in the wilds, leaning in close to one another with their hoods raised.

Panic gripped the girl’s veins like iron bracers and the sound in her ears was squeezed tight and muted. She could not make herself move, think, or breathe. The men were turned away from her, examining something, and they had not seen her. With a barely controlled gasp she managed to unfreeze herself and began to urgently push her way toward the door, shaking in purest terror. But then she stopped and the hold of her fear tightened again, though a moment ago she would not have thought that possible; two more men had just come in by that entrance – hooded, cloaked and dressed exactly alike to the two behind her. She was trapped and it would only be the blink of an eye before they saw her, and then it would be over.

Without the beginning of a thought, she darted aside to a small table lit by a single candle and yanked up her hood in one short, fluid movement. She put out the candle without wetting her fingers, and received a sting that she barely felt in return.

She dug herself back into the corner, half-turned away from the bar, her ears tingling. She could not see them now – there were too many people milling about and standing in the way – but every time someone moved, she flinched, expecting the four grim-faced men to shoulder through and trap her at any moment. It was like being beaten with a rod, but when none of the blows actually landed. She nearly swallowed her tongue trying to stifle the sobs of maddening panic that were threatening to give her away.

[the-small-print]

One hundred…. two hundred… five hundred…. a thousand heartbeats, and nothing had changed. Her fast breathing was making her dizzy and her scalp was tingling, but she could do little to tame it.

Still no sight – no voices other than the somnambulent, vowelly rumblings and laughter of the locals. No black tongue and no kingly tongue, but then –

It crept up on her like the sun spreading through the leaves of a wood, waking her from a deep, nightmarish sleep – a light, gentle sound, languidly lapping at the edge of her oldest, deepest memories. Gods, what was it? Her heart skipped and jittered, her fear now tinged with some longing so strong that it seemed to physically pull at her stomach, aching with the sadness and comfort of it; a beautiful melancholy.

She panned around, entranced and confused, but still mortally afraid. She focused hard, and the sound resolved itself into several voices: none clear, but unmistakably fair….

There! She caught the mouth that was forming the words, in a gap left where one of the patrons had left his stool and moved to the bar. There sat a man – slender but powerfully built, whose features might have been chiselled out of marble by the finest sculptor in all the lands. He was simply garbed and hooded, but the lamp on the table lit his face, and his golden hair shone out over his shoulders. He bore a sheathed long sword of fine proportion and a slender, simple bow of yew was propped unstrung behind him against the tavern wall.

As if feeling the girl’s eyes upon him, he looked up in surprise and interest, and as surely as she knew that water was wet and the sun bright, she knew that she must ask for his help or die, if from nothing else than from the too-fast beating of her terrified heart. She formed her face into a desperate, silent plea and willed him wholeheartedly to hear it.

The man frowned, and a moment later he was lost behind a passing farmer’s son, and then he was gone – only a blank patch of wall, flickering softly in the lamplight.

The lump in her throat might have choked her, had the man not emerged a moment later right by her table, tilting his head to show that she should follow. Her strained heart gave another skip and she rose as quickly and silently as she could, not daring to look around for her hunters, though with every pace towards the door after her mysterious guide, the skin of her back tried to creep around to the front of her to hide. She burst silently out of the door into the dark street and darted across it, following the grey shadow ahead. She was a thousand paces away before she stopped, realising that she had lost the shadow and was following nothing.

“Who are you?”

The voice sounded away to her left, and she spun around to face it. The fair-faced man was standing beneath a birch tree on the edge of the green, watching her interestedly, with a hint of suspicion in his gaze.

“I.. I am – “

Her mouth began to form the first “V” but at once she knew it was a lie. He had called her that. It wasn’t her name.

“I am - need help. You help me! Please!”

“You have not answered my question,” said the man, frowning.

It was hard to think in any tongue but the Black she had learnt and was easiest with, but she knew somehow that she would feel horribly ashamed to speak it here, before this man. She stuttered for a moment, forming words in tongues that did not fit together.

“I – please! You not know what they do to me! They find me! They follow me! Four year and still they follow me!”

She was breathing fast now, clutching at his robes, with tears running down her face.

The man was clearly moved by her distress. He held both of her hands as they tightened on the front of his tunic and spoke slowly and calmly to her:

“Be calm. Tell me – who hunts you? Who has found you?”

This was too much – she didn’t even know words to express whom her pursuers were any more than she knew her true name.

“Men! Narû dubdam! Orch had Andûninae hed manôi nûlu! Izil orch Kor Kharabazra, y Tarik, y Isenna; orch enni hadh an Umbar!”

She could not stop it; a torrent of the King’s tongue sprang from her. It was the only language whose words expressed properly the malignant threat of the men who hunted her. The man was staring at her in shock and disbelief.

“Umbar?”

“Yes! Yes! Umbar! Men from Umbar!”

The man frowned deeply, and stared starkly at the girl for a long, unnerving moment. And then, with a tone of reluctance and suspicion, he spoke.

“Very well, I will help you. Are you armed?”

She swallowed and shook, nodding furiously and gabbing at the handle of the knife at her belt.

“Give me your weapon,” he said coolly, holding out his hand.

She girl stared at him in disbelief.

“I – what? No!” she called, backing away uncertainly.

“Come, I have no reason to trust you. If I know you are not armed, then I will be content. Only then will I help you.”

A sweep of cold washed over her chest as she hesitated, her gaze not wavering from the man’s; cool, calm and solid. Giving up her knife would be like agreeing to have her feet tied, and her heart thumped suspicion against her ribs, but this man held so different a feel to those men that she knew that she could not judge him. There was something in his poise and manner that made him seem odd; ancient and wise. His face was young, though, except…

She looked away. There was something in his eyes that made her feel small and foolish; a poor, silly girl playing games, having nightmares where none were necessary. No man had made her feel that before. There had been frightening gazes, wicked, hateful ones, mad stares, lustful, arrogant or deadly. But they had not made her feel small - simply afraid, or full of furious hate, or both. But these eyes - they were not human. That was good. She knew that the races of man were wicked and cruel. Perhaps this one, whatever he was… perhaps he was not.

She drew her knife and shakingly held it out to him, promising herself that she would break her own neck if he turned on her. He took it with a slight, approving nod and tucked it away inside his cloak quickly.

“Good. You are in no danger from me, unless you choose to betray me, but I have seen enough of the world to know the fear in your eyes is real. Come, we will leave at once.”

He turned and strode away into the shadows, and the girl was left wringing her cloak, a look of desperate indecision on her face.

Ahead might be a short future, but it held a sorely beautiful hint - of a past so far buried she could find the shape of it in her fraught mind. A delicate chance. But behind was certainty, worse by far. There was only one choice to make.

She made it.

[the-small-print]

As always... comments are appreciated.