#thet

When Agzil gasped, it brought nothing but a cold ash into his lungs. His limbs trembled. Even on all fours, they nearly didn’t have the strength to support him. An elbow buckled and he fell to a forearm instead, forehead hitting the dusty ground, flooding his eyes, nose, and mouth, with the same thick, grey soot that covered everything here. “You talk back again, maggot, and the Lieutenant won’t be so friendly!” The orc captain had a strong Lugburz accent. She was from here- the land of endless burning and choking and death. Made Agzil’s head spin. He obviously had done something wrong in his non-reaction, though, because the whip cracked across his back again with a blinding white-hot agony that dropped him flat to the earth. “Enough!” he heard Mirci crying, so distant he almost didn’t comprehend the words. “You’ve taught him your lesson, now leave him!” “You keep out of this, tinkerer!” Agzil breathed a lungful of soot so foul it made his lungs spasm. He coughed into the ground, and slowly raised himself to his forearms again. He could go no further. “You keep sticking out your neck for Gundabad trash, one day it’s going to get sliced!” the captain roared in the background. “Master may like your big metal beasts, but they done us no good! Done disrupted our ranks, made us look like fools- don’t you know we’re at war?!” When a voice spoke out from behind them all, somehow Agzil instantly knew it was not the voice of an orc. The Dark Master had Men in his armies, too, but as far as Agzil knew, Men didn’t speak the Black Tongue, and this newcomer used it with a natural and melodic lilt. Agzil wished he knew Black Speech. The captain barked something back in the same tongue, then Mirci spoke up in Common. “It wasn’t his fault, sir. It was my machine what went wild. Drive gears broke and the whole thing-“ She stopped abruptly. Agzil imagined this newcomer raising a hand in the way he’d never known a real general to do, and the fear that shot through him was icy and cold at the idea that this might be the Lieutenant of the Tower himself. Something sharp and cold tucked beneath his chin. Agzil felt a trickle of blood down his throat, and he worked to raise his head with the only strength he had left. His eyes met the empty, blank pits in a mask of iron, regarding him expressionless and still. He’d never seen Garavdúr before, but he knew what the War Wolf was meant to look like, and so of course he knew what he was faced with now. His entire body trembled, waiting, staring. Garavdúr did not speak for a long moment. Finally he lifted his sword away from Agzil’s throat and let his head fall, muttering softly as he did. “Pathetic creatures...” The heavy metal footfalls moved away. Agzil laid in the dust for a while before he raised his face again. Mirci’s head was there, coated now in black blood and ash, a few feet from where her body lay crumpled and lifeless. Agzil put his forehead in the dust again. The captain gave him another taste of lashing when he did not try to get up.

Thet wished her mother would loosen up on her hand so she could get closer to the extremely hot molten metal, but unfortunately, it seemed her parents were somewhat responsible. They were traders and always had been, and Thet had seen so many different types of places- dwarf-keeps and hobbit villages and little towns of Men- but never before had she seen metal being worked. It was stunning. “What is it going to be?” she asked eagerly, reaching out a hand as if she could touch the white-hot goop. The smith paused and flipped back the heavy iron mask to reveal fair golden hair and a beard done into neatly capped braids. Her face was smeared with soot. “Going to be a knife someday, little one,” she said in a kind and rumbling voice. “Maybe you’ll use it to cut up your dinner.” “Could you make it a necklace?” Thet asked instead, very eager. They had one necklace in the family; her father wore it at all times and she would recognize the dull reddish gold anywhere. There was a garnet set into the middle. She really liked the chain- how delicate and yet sturdy every individual link was. It was fascinating every time her father let her play with it. The smith looked at her and gave a friendly smile, then reached down with a pair of heavy clamps and broke one small section of the metal off. She twisted it into a crude spiral, bent a thin loop over the top, and then plunged it into her bucket of water. There was a hiss and a rush of steam went up from the boiling liquid. Quick as could be, the smith pulled the spiral out with another clamp and laid it on her table. She produced a length of thin leather from a pile nearby and slipped its end through the loop, and tied it off to create a loose circle. She held the trinket out in a gloved hand. “You be careful now. It’s hot.” Thet squirmed free of her mother’s grip and scurried forward on her crutch.  She wrapped her hand in a length of her cloak so she could accept the gift. It was tarnished and none too shiny; just a simple lump of steel crudely wrought into a pendant of sorts, but to Thet’s young eyes it was the most astonishing gift she had ever received. Something made just for her, only for her. Never had she had anything like it. She gripped it tight, pulled it close and looked up eagerly at the tall smith turning back to her work. “I’m going to be just like you someday!” The smith smiled and rustled a hand through the young dwarf’s hair. “You’ll need a good bit of beard before that, little one. Take good care of your necklace.” And Thet never let that shoddy piece of metalwork leave her side.

There was no silence after battle. Corien could only hear the groans of the dying. Flames crackling cruelly in the grass. Huff of beasts and screams carried far away from the walls of the burning city. Orcs that were not quite dead gurgled when he vaulted past. Men that weren’t quite dead begged and choked and sang in shaking, weepy voices. All of it was blurry. Smeared. Nothing real, no sound registering to his battle-worn ears. The only things he heard were the cries of bowstrings, and a clash of steel on steel and wood on stone and metal creaking and screaming and tearing apart. “Halbarad!” he screamed into the settling night. It was lost amidst the identical calls coming up from other places on the field. Other brothers and sisters found hewn, children lifeless, friend and lover ripped apart. Everyone was out to collect their dead. The ribbon tied to the haft of his spear fluttered lightly in the breeze that swept up from the river. It had been blue this morning. It was splattered now with black and scarlet, bruised and sickly beyond repair. He threw the spear aside when he at last saw the gleam of silver against a cloak of bloodstained grey. It took both hands to roll his brother face-up. The silver star Halbarad had always worn on his cloak was shiny and clean, but it was about the only thing left recognizable. Corien’s fingers trembled uncontrollably as he pushed the earth brown hair out of his brother’s face. Blood caught on his fingers and colored his palm scarlet, so he left red smears on the eyelids when he closed those familiar ice-grey eyes. “Halbarad,” he said. His voice sounded so steady it would have surprised him, had he actually believed it was he himself speaking. There was no way it could be. No way he could form the words. “Don’t.. Don’t be dead. You can’t be dead, I- I need you. Please don’t be-“ His eyes travelled slowly to the gashes that tore his brother from jaw to belly and the words broke on a sob. He thought he might have screamed, but so many others were doing the same thing that he couldn’t pick his own voice out from the roar.

Mosco sat listening to the bees. His back rested against the thick grey bark, and his legs were up on a bough, and around his head bees danced from flower to flower in an endless choreographed routine. They were right smart, bees. His ma always said so. They talked back and forth, spoke in their own special language of waltz. Ma used to say that the Greenhands were honey farmers because they had dancing in their blood, and that they and the bees were one and the same. He’d fallen asleep tucked into the branches of his peach tree. The sun was growing low, and at this rate he’d miss his own nineteenth birthday party, but the woods of the Southfarthing were beautiful at sunset in the summer, and he thought he might go for a walk. The grass felt good on his bare feet, if a little cool. His hair hadn’t grown in all proper yet, so sometimes his toes got chilly and he had to embarrass himself wearing socks, but he just chalked that up to his being a “late bloomer,” as Ma put it. He was just out of season. He’d ripen up someday. The birches that made up the part of the forest closest to the farm soon gave way to wrinkly old pines with boughs hanging heavy and dark over their beds of needles. Mosco hummed a walking song, not at all caring for a track to follow, but wandering aimlessly and contemplating his own infinite nineteen-year-old wisdom. The smell of rot stopped him just before he put his foot into it. Beneath the overhanging crypt of the pines, a deer lay dead. Its skin was drawn thin over bones that poked halfway through, and underneath he could see a red-yellow ooze that leaked out into the forest floor. This, he guessed, was what smelled so foul and attracted the bugs. Beetles crawled in and out of the dead animal’s empty eye sockets and nostrils. Worms pitted the parts of its muscle still intact. Mosco saw eggs peppering the ragged hide like white trees in a minuscule forest. His family didn’t eat much meat. They never slaughtered it themselves if they did. He couldn’t think of a time he’d seen a real dead thing. When he got home, he declined the offer of birthday cake and went right to bed, and dreamt of squirming things that burrowed down to lay their eggs in pits beneath his flesh.

Cypress knelt next to the crime scene and tried very hard not to cry. Stuff like this didn’t happen in the Shire. It wasn’t meant to happen. A whole crowd of people looked at her with big, terrified eyes, expecting her to lead them. To tell them what to do in this moment because she was the mayor and she was meant to know. Blood had never been spilled like this. Woodhall’s history was a peaceful one and nothing like this had ever happened before. She looked at the assembled group. It was hard to seem like she wasn’t completely out of her depth, because her voice squeaked rather loudly. “We... We should bury them, yes?” At once the hobbits broke into cries and murmurs that all laid over each other into a horrific cacophony. “They took half the year’s stock!” “How did they get past the borders?” “Why didn’t we know they were coming?” “Are we going to get my honey back?” The last voice was that of Mosco Greenhand, who looked as devastated as the rest, but with an air of determination in his eyes. Cypress raised her hands to quiet the townspeople. “Look, I know this is a lot to process and we can’t understand it yet. But the first thing we ought to do is give these three brave souls who gave their lives for the good of Woodhall a proper burial, yes?” A general murmur of agreement. Cypress looked down at the fair faces she had known, the throats and bellies split by goblin blades, and it made her feel desperately ill. This horror could not be left unpunished.

Sometimes, when Astorrel went to sleep, she had a nightmare. It was always the same one, and it always came on when she decided to rest like other creatures did and actually close her eyes for hours. So, naturally, she avoided doing so. Rested on her feet and never let her guard down while she did it. She never had liked sleeping anyway. Never had any reason to do so for the better part of an age. Lina changed things, though. Lina liked it when Astorrel was there to share her night and her dawn, sleeping and waking, both together as equals. And of course, Astorrel liked to be there when Lina wanted her, and she liked to be close to her beloved, so of course whenever she could she shared Lina’s bed. Made the nightmares come back though. In the deepest hours of the night, when Lina was still and the moonlight slanted in through the window to paint her brown skin silver, Astorrel would lie stiff with her eyes open and nonseeing, and she’d tremble. She knew that in the dream- at least, in parts of it- she was her father. She carried Mirlach, but the blade was younger and the gem hadn’t yet fallen from its hilt. The whole sword always seemed darkened and scarlet-stained to her, and sometimes it dripped. She would hold the fire of the Silmaril and scream and scream as the agony of it withered her flesh away and the stench of rotting burn rose hotly to meet her nostrils, and she would see everything that Maedhros had done to hold the heirloom of his house in his hand, and how in the end, the reward of the quest became its doom. She would feel the irrepressible heat of smoldering, burning rock, and taste the earth as it pressed in, swallowed, took her and her cursed Silmaril into its throat and entombed them there forever. And the dream let her lie, suspended there in agony, the unseen gem scorching her hand to withered bone and the rock pressing in on her, for the entirety of the rest of the world. When she woke up with her hunting knife in her hand, dangerously close to Lina’s back, she decided abruptly she would not be doing this again. She left the cottage that morning before dawn. The next occasion she saw her Lina was on the day she died.

“You’re doing it again,” Léothain said, pulling Wulfrun’s focus away from the herders leading in a group of freshly adult horses to settle in the city. “You don’t really think she’s going to be there, right?” Wulfrun flushed and went back to sharpening her sword. Behind her, Léo plucked the last piece of laundry from the line and waltzed over with his basket against his hip. He stood next to Wulfrun, who sat silent on the stone step and watched young horses and rough herders pass the house by. They didn’t come into the city much; spent most of their time in the downs and the fields tending to their herds. Wulfrun had heard they were capital horsemen, and they guided the herds well enough through the winding lane of Edoras, riding without saddle on their sturdy, gleaming mounts. The horses they were leading in were meant to be ridden in battle. She could tell from the way they moved; so confident with strength and quiet grace, heads set proudly. She’d have one someday. Her fa made enough as a carpenter, but wasn’t much for travel, and they only had one horse for the three of them. The fat little thing was functional enough, but far from the mighty steed Wulfrun dreamed of. “You’re going to be really lucky if you see her again,” said Léo in an irritating sort of singsong voice. Wulfrun scowled at him. The sharpening stone swept over her worn blade again. Again. When most of the herd had passed, she finally found what she’d been seeking. At the rear of the group, riding a tall, shimmering palomino, came the girl. She looked just a little older than Wulfrun’s proud fifteen. Her face gleamed sunshine golden, and the dark hair that should have been dyed probably yellow was grown out and black down to the ears. She wore sturdy, battered clothes like the rest of the herders, but her eyes shone a brilliant black from her regal face. She saw Wulfrun looking and waved. Wulfrun wished she knew her name. She waved back.

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Gosp and Thet by @isharton